"Stefan" Says: "Ben Gurion Airport Security is Not What it Used to Be ..."

Ah, how pristine our old friend Stephen Sizer's passport appears to be in this 2013 checkpoint photo opportunity:

As gleaming as this token, honorary one the peripatetic ex-vicar acquired on his travels recently:

With frequent peregrinations hither and thither in the cause of undermining Christian support for Israel it's not surprising that the owner's EU one is looking a tad knocked about a bit.

Our old friend has been visiting Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth and Ramallah, all the while treating his followers on social media to such posts as these (the first two are nods to Sandra Watfa):

which, inter alia, attracted such odious and unchallenged responses as these from his disciples:

 There was also this from the so-called Peacemaker Mediators' CEO:

That article:

'Howard Jacobson, Simon Sebag Montefiore and Simon Schama posted an open letter in The Times in which they said they were “troubled by the tone and direction of debate about Israel and Zionism within the Labour Party”.

In the centenary year of the Balfour Declaration, in which the British government committed its support to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine, the trio say: “Zionism is the right of the Jewish people to self-determination. We believe that anti-Zionism, with its antisemitic characteristics, has no place in a civil society.”

 In 2009, Booker Prize winner Jacobson, now 75, wrote that criticism of Israel was “a desire to word a country out of existence,” and this week he again equated criticism of Israel with the will to destroy it.

“We do not object to fair criticism of Israel governments,” the three wrote, “but this has grown to be indistinguishable from a demonisation of Zionism itself – the right of the Jewish people to a homeland, and the very existence of a Jewish state.”

They said Jewish conspiracy theories had resurfaced along with “the promotion of vicious, fictitious parallels with genocide and Nazism,” adding: “How, in such instances, is anti-Zionism distinguishable from antisemitism?”

Adding their voice to a growing debate about anti-Zionism and antisemitism, the authors also allege that anti-Zionists “claim innocence of any antisemitic intent” but “frequently borrow the libels of classical Jew-hating”.

Turning their combined attention to Labour, they say “such themes and language have become widespread in Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party… so far the Labour leadership’s reaction has been derisory. It is not enough to denounce all racisms”.'

And if by this post he's attempting to indict Israel, he's barking up the wrong tree:

 For we read:

 'Approximately 215 million Christians experience high, very high, or extreme persecution. North Korea remains the most dangerous place to be a Christian (for 14 straight years). Islamic extremism remains the global dominant driver of persecution, responsible for initiating oppression and conflict in 35 out of the 50 countries on the 2017 list.  Ethnic nationalism is fast becoming a major driver of persecution. “While this took an anti-establishment form in the West, in Asia it took an anti-minorities form, fueled by dramatic religious nationalism and government insecurity. It is common—and easy—for tottering governments to gain quick support by scapegoating Christians. The total number of persecution incidents in the top 50 most dangerous countries increased, revealing the persecution of Christians worldwide as a rising trend.

The most violent: Pakistan, which rose to No. 4 on the list for a level of violence “exceeding even northern Nigeria.”

....The top 10 nations where it is most dangerous and difficult to practice the Christian faith are:

North Korea, Somalia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Eritrea'

But coming back to that passport with its Israeli stamps, here's what our old friend has to say, along with his fellow Christian Israel-basher Jeremy Moodey, who as its (now ex-) CEO put Embrace the Middle East (formerly BibleLands) on its present anti-Israel path:

 As to why these campaigners against Christian Zionism are so deplorable, read what French-born US-based Olivier Melnick wrote in 2015 here

Incidentally, on the subject of the phrase "Judeo-Christian" there is a most contentious current article by a Canadian  British-based academic here

"The Cultural-Economic Boycott of the Jewish State Draws a Great Deal of Strength from Christianity"

With regard to this item, Professor W.D. (Bill) 
Rubinstein has written a guest blog, as follows, showing what a bunch of leftist ratbags constitute Australia's Uniting Church and how that church is in decline:

'The Uniting Church is the third largest Christian denomination in Australia, behind the Catholics and the Anglicans. It was founded in 1977 by a merger of most (not all) Methodists, Presbyterians, and Congregationalists (and thus is unique to Australia). It is also well-known for its extreme left-wing stance on every conceivable issue.

In recent weeks it has also gone on record as endorsing most of the BDS movement, although it has previously attacked Israel several times before. Needless to say, it has nothing whatever to say about, for instance, the Syrian conflict, in which Assad has killed 250,000 of his own people, or, indeed, Islamic terrorism.

 Its takes on so-called "social justice" issues, which may be seen on its website, is a virtual pastiche of left-wing, politically correct stances on every known left-wing cause: climate change, disarmament, gays, Aborigines, illegal immigrants, a "fairer tax system" (this is particularly rich coming from a body exempt from taxation)- you name it, the Uniting Church has jumped on every politically correct bandwagon that has rolled along, apparently to the exclusion of any and all traditional religious issues. Needless to say, the left's current "when in doubt, kick the Jews" mantra is well to the fore.

My main point here, however, is to highlight the fact that the Uniting Church is a body, in terms of its membership, in catastrophic decline. The statistics of this decline are simply staggering. To its credit, the Uniting Church collects and publishes accurate statistics about itself, most recently in the 2013 Uniting Church Census, released in 2014 and available online. The picture this document presents is of a church rapidly heading for extinction. In 1991, on a typical Sunday 163,000 people attended a Uniting Church service anywhere in Australia. In 2013 that number had declined to only 97,000 in the entire country, barely more than the number attending an important AFL [Australian Football League] game on a weekend in August.

 Probably ten times as many people in Australia will see the newest Star Wars movie in the next month. Between 1991 and 2013, attendance at a Uniting Church service has thus declined by 40 per cent. This figure is actually even worse than it seems at first, since in the same period the population of Australia has increased by 35 per cent, from 17 million to 23 million.

In the same period the number of active Uniting Church congregations has declined from 3019 to 2078- in other words, 31 per cent of all Uniting Church congregations have simply closed down through lack of members in only twenty-two years. According to the same survey, 26 per cent of its congregations had no children as members, while another 28 per cent had only 1-4 children as members. In 2013 the average Uniting Church congregation had 2.0 baptisms of new members- and 3.66 funerals. Any business with this track record of abject failure would have long since sacked its entire management- assuming, of course, that it had not already filed for bankruptcy.

It seems very likely- perhaps undeniable – that this diminution in numbers is related to the Uniting Church's left-wing stance on every known issue. Literally hundreds of thousands of former Church adherents have voted with their feet to leave it, in all likelihood most of them conventional families with children. Like other liberal Protestant denominations the Uniting Church may imagine that it can acquire a new source of membership from among minorities, refugees, the poor, gays, political activists, and so on, but all the evidence suggests that their numbers are simply too small to begin to balance the disappearing mainstream.

 The decline of the Uniting Church is also a cause, as well as a product, of its left-wing agenda. As the Church shrinks and conservatives and moderates leave in droves, those remaining will consist, as an ever-greater percentage of its total membership, of committed radicals, whose power and influence within the Church will automatically increase as the Church declines in membership. Soon, however, there may be nothing left. Jews and others who are concerned at the Uniting Church's stance on Israel should bear in mind that they may not have a problem for much longer, although its hostility towards Israel and, indeed, to the West may be louder than ever.'

That is, obviously, reassuring.

Nevertheless, as Richard Mather recently points out in a must-read piece concerning the Christian war on Israel on another front, the despicable collusion of some western Christians in the ludicrous fiction that Jesus was a "Palestinian":

'Of all the anti-Israel discourses that exist today, Christian Palestinianism is perhaps one of the most disturbing because it resurrects the notion of Jews as accursed Christ-killers who deserve permanent exile. As with all anti-Semitic ideas, Christian Palestinianism is about resentment. It is a projection of a sense of inferiority onto an external scapegoat – the Jews.

Egyptian Jewish writer Bat Ye’or believes that the concept of Jesus the Palestinian is symbolic of a growing religious trend – Palestinian replacement theology and the gradual Islamisation of Christianity. Christian Palestinianists, according to Ye’or interpret the Bible from an Islamic point of view and “do not admit to any historical or theological link between the biblical Israel, the Jewish people and the modern State of Israel.”

Ye’or also points to the similarity between Palestinian replacement theology and Marcion gnosticism, which was a second century Christian heresy. Marcion gnostics rejected the Hebrew Bible and believed that the God of Israel was inferior to the God of the New Testament.  Likewise, Christian Palestinianists want to “de-Zionise” the Tanakh, strip Jesus of his Jewish heritage and neutralise prophetic statements relating to Jews and the land of Israel.

Read article here

As well as being  politically motivated, Christian Palestinianism is a religious assault on Judaism and should be seen in the context of centuries of anti-Jewish persecution and ridicule by both Christians and Muslims who are embarrassed and frustrated by the continued existence of the Jewish people.

Make no mistake. The cultural-economic boycott of the Jewish state draws a great deal of strength from Christianity. Much of the anti-Zionism emanating from West can be traced back to faith-based organisations who are either ambivalent about Israel or downright hostile. Christian Aid, the Quakers, the Church of England, the Church of Scotland and the Presbyterians are among those who are guilty of demonising Israel.

And then there are individuals such as Reverend Dr. Stephen Sizer (a prominent and notorious Anglican vicar in England) who believes that Jerusalem and the land of Israel “have been made irrelevant to God’s redemptive purposes,” and that Jews were expelled from the land because “they were more interested in money and power.”

In other words, it is not just Islam and the Left that are responsible for the ostracism and demonisation of the Jewish state. Many Christians, especially those who have embraced the new anti-Semitic replacement theology known as Christian Palestinianism, should be held to account for rekindling the same anti-Jewish prejudices and hatreds that resulted in the Holocaust.' [Emphasis added]

If you live in or near Los Angeles the following conference may be for you:

 Read about it here

Melanie Phillips On Christian Anti-Zionism: "The Church is embracing its own assassin—and the West’s potential nemesis"

Marvellous Melanie Phillips has an absolute humdinger of a new article regarding modern manifestations of Christian Jew-hatred.  It's titled "Jesus Was a Palestinian': The Return of Christian Anti-Semitism" and draws on the work of a number of Christian scholars to make its bold, devastating points and draw its alarming, inevitable conclusion.

After a tour de force through the manifestations of contemporary anti-Zionism on the part of an increasingly large and significant part of Christian opinion, combined with Arab and Islamic attempts to de-judaise  Jesus and cast him in the role of a Muslim icon, "Palestinian" prophet and shahid, together with the increasing "Islamisation" of sections of the the Church, she concludes:

'It is the Muslims who are the inheritors of Moses (peace be upon him) and the inheritors of the real Torah that has not been changed. Muslims believe in all of the Prophets, including Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad, peace and blessings of Allah be upon them all. If the followers of Moses have been promised a right to Palestine in the Torah, then the Muslims are the most worthy nation of this.

Christians would seem increasingly to agree.

The really difficult problem is that supersessionism is not some fringe theology but is deeply rooted in Christian thinking. At the most basic level, the Church believes that Christianity superseded Judaism. The Holocaust caused Western churches to rethink this, although those in Eastern countries remained unmoved. But whereas in the 1965 Papal encyclical Nostra Aetate, the Catholics tried openly to face up to and repudiate their own anti-Jewish thinking, the Protestant churches quietly brushed supersessionism under the carpet.

This failure to address the theological roots of Christian anti-Jewish prejudice left the Protestant churches open to the politically opportunistic and revisionist Palestinian application of the doctrine and its use as a weapon against the State of Israel.

In all the uproar over the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement and the campaign to delegitimize Israel, the role of Protestant churches has received scant attention. This is a terrible mistake. The return of replacement theology is of the greatest possible significance to the way Israel is regarded in the West. The Church still has great influence over Western culture. Even in Britain, people think Christian clerics embody integrity, conscience, and truth-telling; when they assert that Israel is a racist, oppressive, aggressive state, they are believed. And in the United States, such is the centrality of Christianity and the Hebrew Bible that if this theological and political slide into untruth and hatred is not stopped, there will be drastic consequences—not just for support of Israel but for American society.

As Christians are murdered by Islamists across the world, some of their churches are directing their passions elsewhere. They are busily rewriting history, constructing a theology out of gross political distortion and lining up once again with historic forces of unfathomable darkness. It is not just the State of Israel that is being threatened as a result. Stamping upon its parent, the Church is embracing its own assassin—and the West’s potential nemesis.'

Read marvellous Melanie's article here

"Christian Palestinianism ... The Inverted Mirror Image Of Christian Zionism" (videos)

Below is a very disturbing insight into the malicious phenomenon dubbed "Christian Palestinianism" as exposed by  Dr Paul Wilkinson, of Hazel Grove Gospel Church in Stockport, Cheshire and author of For Zion’s Sake: Christian Zionism and the Role of John Nelson Darby.  In this talk a couple of years ago (but no less valuable for that) he demonstrates the political revisionism, replacement theology, and repugnant teachings of organisations like Sabeel that promote a movement in which "The Holocaust is resented, not remembered," that ignores the violence to which Israel is subject, and that aims to portray Jesus not as what he was, a Jew from Judea, but as a "Palestinian born under occupation".

His lecture on this topic opens with the song "Freedom for Palestine"that's become the backtrack to many an Israel-demonising presentation, and among the teaching aids used in his lecture is a cameo appearance by that obsessive crusader against Christian Zionism, Stephen Sizer.

Hat tip: P.H.

And in this lecture, entitled "A Biblical Response To Stephen Sizer," Dr Wilkinson does a superb job of tracing and countering the anti-Israel Anglican vicar's noxious views: