Daphne Anson: As Sizer Announces Retirement, UK's Israel-Demonising Christians Shifting into High Gear? [updated]

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)

Friday, 7 October 2016

As Sizer Announces Retirement, UK's Israel-Demonising Christians Shifting into High Gear? [updated]

Our old mate Stephen Sizer, vicar of Virginia Water, vice-chair of Biblica Europe and trainer for Christianity Explored, recently made an announcement to his followers on social media.

The Israel-bashing Anglican cleric, who in January 2015 infamously made an odious post on Facebook suggesting Israel's involvement in the 9/11 atrocity, has advised:

"Easter 2017 will mark my 20th anniversary as vicar of Virginia Water. After prayerful reflection and in consultation with our Church Council, I plan to retire from parish ministry on Easter Sunday, 16th April.

God willing, I will then dedicate the rest of my active life to serving the Lord wherever the Church is under-resourced, disadvantaged or persecuted, where human rights are denied, or justice, peace and reconciliation needed.

Friends have helped set up a charity to facilitate this. We will launch the charity at a reception on Saturday 3rd December, 19:00 at Christ Church, Virginia Water. Garth Hewitt, one of our trustees, will be performing songs from his new album, Peace at Christmas...."

A message from Balfour Project stalwart Mary Grey

What might that charity be? (For Hewitt see here)

The six-month ban from social media imposed on Sizer by his bishop as a result of that 9/11 post has long since expired. As far as I'm aware, the vicar (whose posts suggest political support for Jeremy Corbyn) has avoided directly mentioning the subject of Israel on his Facebook posts since his ban expired, being content to "like" posts on that subject by such "Friends" of his as the Israel-demonising Jenny Tonge.

And, boy, does the vicar have a lot of anti-Israel, nay, rabidly anti-Israel, Friends, including antisemitic ones (just google Tony Gratrex, for instance).

Sizer's resignation of his pulpit will presumably unshackle him, or perhaps "unmuzzle him" would be a better way of putting it, and we can presumably expect him to resume his active campaigning against Israel and Christian Zionism. After all, 2 November 2017 will be the centenary of the Balfour Declaration, and Israel-bashers galore (many of them connected with the so-called Balfour Project) are seemingly preparing to shift into high gear for that.

Closely allied to Sizer is former British diplomat, Rothschilds Bank executive and thwarted would-be Conservative parliamentary candidate Jeremy Moodey, CEO since 2009 of Embrace the Middle East (a Christian charity formerly known as Biblelands).

As a Christian Moodey-watcher, aghast at Moodey's turning that organisation into 'an anti-Zionist propaganda mill,' observed in 2012 (a statement as true now as then):

".... Unfortunately, mixed in with Embrace’s good work is an alarming amount of hostility toward the Jewish state. Israel is regularly cast as the villain in the story Moodey tells about the Middle East. The undeniable misdeeds of Arab and Muslim leaders in the Middle East are selectively ignored.

....

Moodey [has] directed all his ire at Israel and offered hardly a word of criticism toward Hamas, which has turned the Gaza Strip into an open-air gulag for its inhabitants – its Christians especially – who recently went public with complaints of forced conversions.....

No reasonable commentator can ignore the role Hamas has played in making the lives of the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip miserable and its cynical use of the suffering it has caused as a tool to lambaste Israel. No reasonable commentator would fail to hold Hamas to account for the rockets it launched, or allowed to be launched into Israel.

Moodey does.

....Moodey insists that Israel withdraw its citizens from the West Bank, but what assurances can he give that such withdrawals will lead to peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors?...."

Here is Moodey defending the execrable anti-Israel stunt at St James's Church Piccadilly a few years ago.

And here he is talking enthusiastically and sickeningly at SOAS when a member of an anti-Zionist, anti-Israel panel in 2013 foreshadowing the establishment of an anti-Israel grassroots campaign in the churches to, as another speaker explained to applause from the audience, oppose and defeat "the Zionist Project". (Richard Millett video):

Richard Millett ably challenged Moodey here

Other examples of Moodey's longstanding jaundiced attitude towards Israel can be seen here and here and here and here

He appears to be more interested in slamming Israel for supposed offences against Christians than he is in condemning the real crimes of Muslim regimes against them. He clearly has scant sympathy for the scriptural underpinnings of the Jewish People's attachment to Eretz Israel. He dismisses the Religious strand within the Zionist movement and approvingly cites instead a minority of ratbag "Liberal Jewish" anti-Zionists. And as we see on this Christian website he keeps up a relentless round of anti-Israel propaganda.

As this photo of him shows (yes, let's see it again), Moodey is supportive of such anti-Israel gimmicks as the 'checkpoint' exhibit at London's Hinde Street Methodist Church.

That's the display which attracted such antisemitic comments in its visitor's book as "IDF soldiers are the scum of the earth. They are disgusting filth and animals and need to be burned alive" (see here)

More here

And see Jonathan Hoffman's observations here.

Last month, too, Moodey paid a visit to Salisbury, Wiltshire, to address the group Sarum Concern for Israel Palestine (SCIP). A one-sided Methodist group, it seems One of the fruits of that squalid initiative launched at SOAS, perhaps?

That Moodey's propaganda ("Israel/Palestine: Where's the Hope?") fell on receptive ears is indicated by the title of an ensuing report entitled "Charity chief brings message of Palestinian hope to Salisbury".

It summarise Moodey's talk. And, what d'you know? Right away his cited authority is no less an Israel-basher than Avi Shlaim. Not much in the way of objectivity here, then. No presentation of Israel's case. Just the drip, drip, drip of anti-Israel agitprop.

"Can there be hope for Palestinians, he asked, when the state of Israel controls 90% of historic Palestine including most of the Palestinian West Bank, and with a decades-long failure to reach agreement on borders between Israel and a Palestinian state? Quoting the British/Israeli historian Professor Avi Schlaim [sic] he said that negotiations had been like trying to decide how to divide a pizza while one side had already gobbled most of it up.

Jeremy's answer is an unequivocal 'yes'. Even in Gaza, with 1.8 million inhabitants the most densely populated area in the world and still devastated following Israel's 2014 onslaught, there is cause for hope today. Jeremy cited projects initiated by the tiny 1,200 strong Christian community and part funded by Embrace. These include therapy for children traumatised by war, vocational training for young people and a highly regarded health clinic used overwhelmingly by Muslim women and staffed by Christians and Muslims. In Jerusalem the YMCA rehabilitates Palestinian children who have emerged brutalised from Israeli military detention."

It goes on:

"In the immediate future 2017 marks a number of significant anniversaries - a decade since the start of the Gaza blockade, 50 years since the Israeli occupation, 70 years since the UN Partition Plan, and 100 years since the Balfour Declaration - which it is hoped will increase public awareness of the Palestinian cause and strengthen demands for governments around the world to shift their Israel/Palestine policy. Attitudes are already changing. A Pew Research Center study published earlier this year found that the percentage of 'millennials' - children born after 1980 - in the US who sympathised with the Palestinians had increased to 27% from just 9% in 2006. Those who sympathised with Israel fell from 51% to 43%."

The inevitable nod to BDS, which Moodey favours:

"In the UK, according to Jeremy, demands will focus on the recognition of a Palestinian state, a ban on trade with illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, an end to the Gaza blockade and support of divestment from companies profiting from the occupation."

Finally, an ominous hint of a one state solution, perhaps?:

"And the long-term hope? That Israelis and Palestinians will one day live in peace and recognise that no empire lasts for ever - not least in Palestine where, as Jeremy points out, no fewer than 26 empires have come and gone since 2000 BC."

Yes, 2017 should prove to be a bumper year for anti-Israel agitprop. The excitement over at the so-called Balfour Project is almost palpable.

Meanwhile, will Sizer and Moodey be attending this Friday and weekend's anti-Israel fest sponsored by Lichfield Cathedral, which I blogged about a few days ago?

Super blogger David Collier has vowed to be there. It will be most interesting to read his take on matters.

Update: here is David's gut reaction. The cathedral should be deeply ashamed.

Further update: What's the vicar up to here?! Perhaps I'd better tell Mostafa about Al Beeb's many links to CAABU and the anti-Israel stance of its reporter Keith Kyle dating back to the 1960s. But somehow I don't think that's what Mostafa wants to hear...

2 comments:

Sam8 October 2016 at 07:09
This brings to mind the Arabic saying which roughly translates to: "If you hear inferiors criticise me, it is a testimony to my perfection."
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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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