Israel-Bashing English ChristiansTwinkling Among Tinkling Teacups

2 November 2017.  Tick tock. Tick tock.

In the countdown to the centenary of the Balfour Declaration anti-Israel initiatives in the UK are coming thick and fast, and Christian Israel-bashers are joining in with gusto.

Our old friend Stephen Sizer, the ex-vicar of Virginia Water and now based in Southampton as CEO of the so-called Peacemaker Mediators organisation, has been very active, with Peacemaker Mediators leaving little doubt that it has Israel and Israel's supporters centrally in its sights.

Sizer has recently been to Amersfoort in the Netherlands for the Kairos/Sabeel Conference.

It was there that he presented his analysis of Walter Bruggemann's Chosen? that he'd begun in note form while in Kigali awaiting a delayed flight to Doha, sustained by cups of refreshing African tea. (Photo above)

Should you be so inclined, you can view the analysis here

One of his allies, Robert Cohen, who's married to an Anglican vicar (of the double X chromosome variety) and blogs against Israel at Micah's Paradigm Shift and Pantheos, was recently in posh Cheltenham for a churchy Israel-bashing shmooze which apparently had the local Conservative MP purring:

Funny of Cohen to term organiser Symon"brave"; I'm sure there were no Israeli suicide bombers on hand to vent disapproval).

From here:

Reverting to our old friend, in whose name the Balfour Project website was (and perhps still is) rumoured to be registered, he's been full of excitement over this.  And so, evidently, has antisemite and  9/11 troofer Tony Gratrex, long associated with the Reading Palestine Solidarity Campaign:

(See more on that event, due to take place on 31 October, here)

Sizer gloats on the Peacemaker Mediators' website:

Balfour, Beasts and Bartolotti

They've been gearing up for quite a time now, the Israel haters behind the Balfour Project (it has been claimed, rightly or wrongly, that the person who registered the domain name was a certain soon-to-be-ex-vicar).

Here's a photograph of two members of the Scottish Parliament, posing gleefully outside Holyrood with  anti-Balfour propaganda.  Both are in favour of a unilaterally recognised state of  Palestine.

On the left of the picture as we face it stands Sandra White MSP, of the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP).

Got into a beastly spot of bother a while back did short and and perhaps not so sweet Sandra, co-convenor of the cross-party group on Palestine at Holyrood. 

She retweeted an antisemitic cartoon showing a porcine beastie with wee porcine beasties representing Israel, Isis, Al Qaeda and so on suckling at its teats and the word "Rothschild" written across its belly.

This caused outrage in many quarters, including calls for her prosecution, but with the SNP's backing Sandra weathered the storm.  The retweet had been made "accidentally".  Apparently.

Standing on the right of the above photo is Benenden-educated Labour MSP Claudia Beamish, who's prone to call the Arabs the indigenous people of Israel.  Her Jewish great-grandma knew better.

Claudia's father, you see, was one of the Big Beasts of the Israel-hating movement, and a Tory backbencher at that.  He was  none other than Colonel Sir Tufton Beamish (l917-89), made a life peer as Lord Chelwood in 1974.  Outspokenly hostile to Israel's creation, he was a member of CAABU's general council (I blogged about that particular nest of vipers here) and later formed a pro-Arab pressure group within the Tory Party.

Sir Tufton was halachically a Jew, though he seems to have concealed the fact. His mother was the sister of Sir Ernest Simon and his maternal grandmother was an active shul member in Manchester and a Zionist, no less!

At least he didn't call himself an as-a-Jew!

Now that the centennial year of the Balfour Declaration has arrived a number of anti-Balfour initiatives besides the Balfour Project are in existence.

We read here that former Lib Dem (now independent) life peer Jenny Tonge, former Lib Dem MP David Ward, and Labour life peer Lord Ahmed

'are fronting the Balfour Apology Campaign, led by the London-based Palestinian Return Centre, which is seeking an official apology from the British government for issuing the Declaration “which has caused so much damage”....'

We all know what would happen to Israel if the Return Centre had its wicked way.  And all members of that trio have form when it comes to Jews and Israel: all, as that article reminds us, have made antisemitic remarks. It adds:

'Simon Johnson, chief executive of the Jewish Leadership Council, said it was “a ridiculous argument” and “a futile and hate-filled campaign”.

He added: “What they are doing is asking for an apology for issuing a non-binding statement of commitment that was the first step towards the establishment of a Jewish homeland. That is as close to denying the right of Israel to exist as I can think of, and should be called out as anti-Semitic.”'

And here's someone who should be called out as antisemitic, Pippa Bartolotti, formerly leader of the Welsh Greens and now, to quote her official Facebook page, their "deputy spokesperson".

 She has displayed her antisemitic credentials before, as I have shown, with references to the "Roth[s]childs".  (Google Daphne Anson Pippa Bartolotti for my previous posts on this lady).

Pippa Bartolotti has given her ten pence worth on the Balfour Declaration.

Here she is on 2 March this year:

 A conspiracy theorist gets into the act:

And who hastened to "Like" that 9/11 Israel did it conspiracy theory? Step forward the lady herself:

A War By Any Other Means ...

Press TV, propaganda organ of the conspicuously discriminatory regime that runs Iran,yet for some strange reason manifestly not boycotted by Lauren Booth (pictured, with a certain old rogue in cardboard cut-out) and other ardent Western champions of BDS against Israel, reports:

'The UK-conspired Balfour Declaration that led to the creation of the racist regime of Israel on the rubble of occupied Palestine has been condemned by the Palestinian Authority (PA) as “a crime against humanity.”

The declaration by Britain’s then Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour on November 2, 1917, read that his government considered “with favor the establishment in Palestine a national home for the Jewish people”. More than 30 years later, the Israeli regime was created and installed in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

On the occasion of the 96th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, the Palestinian Ministry of Information issued a statement stressing that “since 1917, the Palestinian people are paying the price of the biggest political crime in contemporary history.”

The Palestinian ministry described the declaration as “a mark of shame on humanity.”

The declaration “began the Zionists’ process of ethnically cleansing the Palestinians from their homeland, which continues until today,” the statement said.

“Britain and the entire world must recognize the usurped Palestinian rights because everything that has befallen Palestine - it’s partition, the aggression, the suppression, the settlements, the arrests, the separation wall, the siege on Gaza, and the millions of Palestinians living in exile - was made possible because of the Balfour Declaration”, it added.

The Palestinian Fatah movement led by Mahmoud Abbas censured the British-engineered declaration as “an infamous and illegal promise” that has brought misery to the Palestinians.

The movement said Britain and other supporters of Israel were responsible for “racist and Zionist crimes.”

Fatah said that “the Palestinian people are determined to get all their rights and to liberate their homeland from Israeli occupation and Jewish settlers.”

It called upon Britain to apologize and make amends for the crimes committed against Palestine because of the declaration.'

It is almost certainly no accident that this latest propagandistic onslaught against the Zionist Entity by those who have failed to defeat Israel by force of arms resembles the massive propagandistic onslaught against Israel contained in the so-called Balfour Project, the website of which -- registered in the name of Stephen Sizer, I've been told, and whether my informant is right or wrong Sizer's certainly a prime mover behind the Project-- now informs us that the Project (which has been actively crusading retrospectively against the Balfour Declaration for some time now, holding conferences and gathering material, and is of course gearing up for the Declaration's centenary in 2017)

 "seeks to mark the centenary of the Balfour Declaration by:

 acknowledgement of Britain’s actions at the time of the Balfour Declaration and throughout the Mandate, and particularly the deceit surrounding our nation’s true intentions;

 pardon for our nation’s wrongdoing

    - from Palestinians for having intentionally ignored their legitimate aspirations and from Jews for our part in the centuries of anti-Semitism.

     integrity in our nation’s future dealings with Jews, Palestinians, and all peoples."

Watch out for the sting in their tail.

Update: see also Richard Millett's blog here and Dave Rich's blog here on the Community Security Trust site.

British Christians Countering Anti-Israel Claptrap

The latest post from that most welcome organisation Christian Middle East Watch concerns the insidious Israel-undermining initiative "The Balfour Project" (whose mainstays include, tellingly enough for what the ladies and gentlemen of the Project have in mind regarding the Balfour Declaration's anniversary in 2017), the now UK-based John Bond, ex-secretary of the National Sorry Day Committee, Australia.

Inter alia, the post observes:

'The Balfour Project makes use of several revisionist articles to claim that Britain needs to apologise to both Jews and Arabs for its historical "balagan" (Arab for a proper foul-up), but betrays itself as another attempt at delegitimisation by its own strap-line "Contributing to justice, peace and reconciliation in the Middle East". As soon as you see the words "justice", "peace", "reconciliation" and "Middle East" in the same sentence, you know you are facing another attempt to denigrate and delegitimise the state of Israel.

The Balfour Project has already started holding meetings around the UK and while, to their credit, their meeting in Winchester included speakers opposed to the aims of the Project, most of the speakers and writers involved are also heavily connected to the BDS and delegitimisation movements, including Rev Stephen Sizer, Prof Ilan Pappe and others.

The Balfour Project aims to make sufficient impact in Britain that the Government will be forced into an apology for the Balfour Declaration on its centenary in 2017. This apology is not needed, will not contribute to peace or justice and will not diminish the depth of feelings for and against Israel. The Balfour Project claims it does not deny the right of Israel to exist, but Rabbi Dan Cohen-Sherbok threw a spanner in the works in his speech at the Project's meeting in Winchester by pointing out that if the Balfour Declaration should not have been made then does that mean that the Jews should not have been offered a homeland and that Israel should not exist today?'  (Read more here)

Meanwhile, the following, by Ian G, is cross-posted from The Almond Rod blog, and is a sequel to this cross-post:

Developing Christian Zionism, my next steps. Between the wars, 1967-73.

In 1967, I was a young Christian who had much to learn about the scriptures and even more to learn about Israel and Zionism. I would not have used that term then, but as I have already indicated here , the basics were already in place. I still had to survive school, a gap-year, discover what I really wanted to do and get into college. It would be misleading to say that Israel was at the forefront of my thinking.

For me, as for many, it is only when those years were looked at in retrospect that we realised what had been happening. What seemed like an intensely personal journey, which it was, turned out to be road on which many others were also travelling. Sometimes called 'The Jesus Movement' what had happened was actually a unique form of revival. In the past, Christian revivals have always been associated with places and spread from there. This time it took place across a generation. Roughly between the Israeli wars, a generation came to faith in Jesus Christ in a radical (proper sense - not political), evangelical and charismatic way. Denominational barriers came crashing down, and were viewed by many as irrelevant.

In 1967 a great many Christians were looking at their Bibles and wondering what is was they were witnessing. For me, as for many, these words of Jesus were taking on a new significance: “From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts out its leaves, you know that summer is near.

Now there are many who argue that is nothing to do with current day Israel and some of them are conservative evangelical Christians. But there were and are a great many Christians who looked at the state of the world and began to wonder if these were truly the end-times.

(Before anyone posts saying the last days started with Pentecost, I know that. The question is are we reaching the end of the last days?)

We had only just begun to emerge from the shadow of WW2, the Korean War had ground to a halt, the Vietnam war was rumbling on and we had survived the Cuba crisis. Most people of my age were too young to understand the Cuba crisis, but everyone a few years older and paying attention was scared witless.

The vast armies and massive devastation of the apocalyptic books of the Bible began to look a lot less symbolic.

We were beginning to realise that we were looking at a series of 'firsts'. For the first time in history we had the capability of destroying not only ourselves but everything else as well. The end of the world was suddenly nigher than we wanted it to be. For the first time we had the ability to translate the scriptures into every language on the planet and for the first time the gospel could be preached to every nation even without going there by Radio and TV.  (The internet was in its infancy so very few knew about it and the Web was decades away.)

And of course, the big first, the clincher for many bible-believing Christians, was the emergence of the Nation of Israel in the Land and it kept on surviving wars where human reason expected that it would be destroyed. Not only that, Israel was gaining territory!

Then, we began to hear of Jews coming to believe that Jesus was the Messiah. I know that Jewish readers will have their own opinions about this last one and I will have to examine it another time.  Suffice it to say, for the moment, that the Early Christians (all Jews) decided that Gentiles did not have to become Jews in order to join the Church. Similarly, there is no reason why a Jew should magically cease to be a Jew when joining the Church. After all, Jesus is a Jewish Messiah.

Of course, it didn't work out like that historically and there are knotty issues even today. I will explore these in other posts. 

Finally, those Christians who take an interest in such matters began to realise that devout Jews were beginning to look for the coming of the Messiah. We were beginning to see some sort of understanding, a lessening of hostility and a common hope. The only difference was over one word. Christians are also looking for the (second) coming of the Messiah.

Unpacking that one word should be interesting.

Post Script

Shortly after the '67 conflict, I read Obadiah as part of my daily devotions. As a result, I concluded that some sort of conflict in Lebanon was to be expected. That one is still working itself out! I still think that Israel will have to create some sort of protected zone for the Lebanese people who want to live in peace and are also in danger from Israel's enemies, rather like the Kurds were given in Saddam's Iraq.'

Scottish Jews Protest Church Of Scotland's Association With Stephen Sizer

The umbrella body of Jews north of the Border, the Scottish Council of Jewish Communities (SCoJeC), has issued a formal protest to the Church of Scotland, which co-sponsored the Balfour Project's Conference in Edinburgh on 2nd November.

Explains the SCoJeC:

 'The SCoJeC has written to the Church of Scotland, formally protesting at the Church’s sponsorship of and participation in a conference to mark the 95th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, at which Rev Stephen Sizer [pictured, courtesy of this blog, some time ago, with the notorious Raed Salah] is the “keynote” speaker.  The event is organised by the “Balfour Project” (which appears only to exist as a domain name registered to Sizer), and is promoting an apology by the UK Government for what the [sic] “historical injustice” of the Balfour Declaration.

Sizer, a Church of England Minister, has repeatedly associated himself with Holocaust denial, right wing extremism, and unabashed antisemitism – his website links to the antisemitic forgery, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, antisemitic conspiracy theories, and Holocaust denial. As a consequence, he has been condemned publicly by the Council of Christians and Jews for "conduct unbecoming of a clergyman".  Just last week, the Board of Deputies of British Jews has taken the unprecedented step of submitting a formal disciplinary complaint about him to the Church of England.

An initial informal approach to the Church and Society Council, apprising them of our concerns, was dismissed as an “issue of perception”, so, after consultation with communal organisations, SCoJeC wrote formally to inform the Church that “we are unanimous that for the Church of Scotland to provide a platform for this speaker would be perceived as highly offensive throughout the Jewish community.”  We also made it unambiguously clear that our complaint was not about Sizer's views on Israel or the Middle East, but “his repeated flirtations with supersessionism, Holocaust denial, right-wing extremism, and unabashed antisemitism”.

We attached a dossier detailing many of these, and added “once can be a mistake; persistence can not … linking to another website is advertising its content. He is thus advertising the advertising of the Protocols, antisemitic conspiracy theories, and Holocaust denial.”

This letter received a lengthy but nonetheless dismissive reply from the Rev John Chalmers, the Principal Clerk, which failed to address any of the evidence we had provided, but largely consisted of a list provided by Sizer of his supporters, and concluding that the Church is “satisfied by [Sizer’s] own public position statements” that he is not antisemitic, but only critical of the State of Israel.

This is self-evidently not the case, and we therefore replied quoting the Board of Deputies’ comment that: 

“The evidence indicates that he spends time trawling dark and extreme corners of the internet for material to add to his website ... introducing his readers to the racist and antisemitic websites from where he draws his material. ... Revd Sizer keeps some strange company. He has shared a platform with and quoted from Holocaust deniers, goes on trips to Iran as the guest of the NEDA Institute which contributes to global efforts to deny the Holocaust, and gave an interview with Qods News Agency, a Holocaust denying website.”

We have, however, expressed the hope that our efforts to promote good community relations and to enhance and strengthen the interfaith work in which we are all engaged will not suffer. 

“Both our communities have endorsed the Scottish Government’s strenuous efforts to make religious hatred unacceptable in all its forms, but the dissemination of Sizer's message in Scotland must inevitably undermine this. … You say that you “hope we can overcome this difficult moment and seek to move forward in developing our good relationship”. We share that hope, but with some pessimism: please be in no doubt about the harm your willing association with this man and his activities will undoubtedly do.”'

(See more here)

As for the Board of Deputies, the fact that it is prepared to cooperate with Oxfam, an NGO highly critical of Israel, a decision which has not unnaturally provoked concern, surely suggests that it has not complained about Sizer lightly.

Meanwhile, presumably in reaction to the Board's protest, Rev Sizer has reposted on his blog a statement issued in May following an abortive attempt by the Council of Christians and Jews to have him prosecuted for antisemitism.

(Incidentally, I hear that Egypt-based Dutch Rev Jos Strengholt and The Anglican Publishing House in Cairo are about to publish two of Sizer's books – Christian Zionism: Roadmap to Armageddon? and Zion's Christian Soldiers: The Bible, Israel and the Church – in Arabic.)

Angling For An Apology: Britons Battling The Balfour Declaration

"With the Balfour Declaration of 2nd November 1917 Britain unleashed a series of events in Palestine that have not only caused enormous suffering and loss to the Palestinian people but also unleashed recurrent waves of terrorism affecting many parts of the world to this day. The British Government must accept its historic responsibility and issue an apology."

So runs a silly doomed-for-the-dustbin e-petition to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office concocted last year by an anti-Israel activist.  Tweeted at intervals by its framer, who also happens to head a small Palestine Solidarity Campaign branch somewhere in the British boondocks, the e-petition closed in August this year, having attracted just 155 signatures.

The idea behind the petition, however, has evidently stirred independently in other breasts.

Step forward the Steering Committee of an initiative calling itself The Balfour Project:

Dr Mary Embleton, Historian
Professor Mary Grey, Theologian, writer and activist.
Dr Imad Karam, Academic and film maker
Peter Riddell. Peace activist
Dr Monica Spooner, Medical Doctor
Professor Roger L Spooner OBE,  Scientist
Rev Dr Stephen Sizer Anglican vicar and author

Professor Grey helped to exonerate Sizer from the charge of antisemitism being considered against him by the Crown Prosecution Service last year, but I understand that a Jewish scholar and non-practising Liberal rabbi who did likewise declined to be involved with The Balfour Project, the stated aims of which are:

Marking the centenary of the Balfour Declaration in 2017 as a contribution to justice, peace and reconciliation in the Middle East.

Mindful of Britain’s responsibility, the Balfour Project will encourage understanding of what led to the Balfour Declaration, and what flowed from it.

The Balfour Project will facilitate a network of educational, political, religious and humanitarian groups who share this vision.

The Balfour Project network hopes to produce a wide range of multimedia resources suitable for children and adults, and promote a series of international conferences and cultural exchanges to enable participants to engage with empathy those who have been negatively impacted by the Balfour Declaration.

The Balfour Project seeks to contribute to justice and peace in the Middle East, and in particular the resolution of conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

Not that the Project is utterly devoid of Jewish involvement, as the inclusion of a familiar Israel-demonising name among its Advisers shows:

John Bond OAM, Former Secretary, National Sorry Day Committee, Australia
Anne Clayton, Coordinator of Friends of Sabeel UK
Abe Hayeem, Architect, peace activist.
Simon Keyes, Director, St Ethelburga’s Centre
Professor Ilan Pappe
Massoud Shadjareh, Chair of the Islamic Human Rights Commission
Professor Nur Masalha  Professor of Religion and Politics
Dr Peter Shambrook, Historian and author.
Mariam Tadros, Trustee Biblelands

On 2 November this year (the 95th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration) the Quaker Meeting House in Edinburgh will host the Project's inaugural showcase event, a conference ntitled "Britain's historic responsibilities for the Israel-Palestine conflict: starting an honest conversation":

"The Balfour Project, in association with the Church of Scotland, is organising a one-day conference on the British involvement in Palestine in the first half of the last century. This is a first step in exploring how to mark the centenary of the Balfour Declaration in exactly five years on 2nd November 2017.

The Balfour Project has been created by a group of academics and activists who believe that this anniversary should not pass unremarked. Mindful of Britain’s responsibility for what has come to pass in the Middle East, the Balfour Project will encourage understanding of what led to the Balfour Declaration, and what flowed from it. Through our website, we plan to facilitate a network of educational, political, religious and humanitarian groups who share this conviction. We aim to stimulate conferences, cultural exchanges and the production of multimedia resources.  Above all, we believe that the search for the truth of what took place, and the acknowledgement of wrong-doing, can contribute to justice, peace and reconciliation in the Middle East.

In the morning Dr Mary Embleton, whose special interest is Britain’s involvement in the Middle East, will outline the contradictory promises Britain made to Arabs and Jews, and their consequences for all parties before and during the British Mandate in Palestine. This will be followed by keynote papers from Rev Dr Stephen Sizer, who will talk about the ideas that shaped this period, Professor Mary Grey will talk about the main players and Dr Imad Karam will talk about the consequences for Palestinians today. In the afternoon John Bond OAM, former Secretary of Australia’s Sorry Day campaign, will use the 2008 national apology to Aboriginal Australians to discuss the impact of acknowledgement and apology."

See the conference programme here

Lloyd George and Leo Amery

I shall resist suggesting that Jews should request an apology from the Church of Scotland and the Church of England for aggressive missionary activity undertaken among the Jews of the Holy Land and elsewhere during the nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries.

Instead, I shall remind the Church of Scotland, whose World Mission Council's Secretary, Rev. Ian Alexander, is scheduled to welcome conference-goers, that it was the son of a Hungarian Jewish woman whose family had been converted to Christianity by Church of Scotland missionaries, who was the true drafter of the Balfour Declaration.

Step forward the shade of Leopold Amery, who never forgot his Jewish roots.

Oh, the delicious irony!