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)
Showing posts with label Peacemaker Trust. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Peacemaker Trust. Show all posts

Sunday, 21 October 2018

On the Dark Side of the Moon: Sizer in Oklahoma

This year, the Christ at the Checkpoint (CATC) Conference, a bi-annual Israel-bashing event dedicated to undermining Christian Zionism and founded by Palestinian activists in Bethlehem eight years ago, is being held in the United States for the very first time.

As reported inter alia here, Luke Moon, deputy director of the Philos Project, believes that while CATC will in all likelihood not "turn a significant number of evangelicals against Israel, he believes their attack on Christian Zionism is anti-Semitism in disguise" and has expressed surprise at finding that Stephen Sizer, CEO of the so-called Peacemaker Trust (which appears to be more obsessively concerned with attacking Israel than ever before) is a speaker: 
A naive ally -er- alibi (geddit?)  Yep, there's always one ...
"I kept asking myself, are the organizers so foolish to cast such a negative shadow over the conference. It became clear that Sizer's work in fighting Christian Zionism was more important than his anti-Semitism.
This shows me two things about CATC. First, it shows that they are not as concerned about anti-Semitism as they claim. Second, they fail to recognize how inviting Sizer undermines their efforts to attract Christians to their cause. 
Anti-Zionism seeks to delegitimize the claims of the Jewish people to the land of Israel. It is the connection to that land, the shared memory and hope that one day they would be restored to their land, Zion, that preserved the Jews as a particular people among the nations they lived. Anti-Zionism seeks to strip that away.
I believe there is sufficient evidence to show that attacking Christian Zionism not only harms Jewish-Christian relations, it leads to an environment where it's not just the relations that are harmed, it's the Jews themselves."

Friends on ...
Meanwhile, Sizer (who is apparently hoping to visit Atlanta and Seattle next year) is miffed that the first  review of the Kindle edition of his (Sizer's) notorious book Zion's Christian Soldiers is a critical one, albeit measured, by James Mendelsohn, and is requesting his social media faithful to post their own to neutralise it.

Opines Mendelsohn:
'[T]he book is seriously marred by the author's very obvious anti-Israel agenda.
Facebook react ...
A clear example of this is his statement on pp. 69-70: "The 'dividing wall of hostility', typified by the barrier that separated Jews and Gentiles in the temple, has been broken down by Jesus Christ. It is ironic, if tragic, that despite his willingness to comply with all the petty temple regulations concerning ritual purity, Paul would eventually be arrested for allegedly bringing Greeks into the temple and defiling God's house (Acts 21:28-29).
Today, their successors in the government of Israel are seeking to erect a much higher and longer 'separation barrier' to preserve their racial identity and exclusive claim to the land of Palestine." The phrase, "Today, their successors..." seems to imply that Jews, or at least Jewish leaders, are incorrigibly racist. Since there are both Jews and Arabs both to the East and to the West of Israel's security barrier, Sizer's claim is demonstrably false. Rather, the security fence was built to stop Israelis being killed, and has been demonstrably successful: 431 Israelis were killed in 137 suicide bombings between September 2000 and the completion of the northern and most of the Jerusalem sections of the wall, 100 in March 2000 alone.
and react ...
 After the completion of the wall in the north, there was not a single terrorist attack across that section. By December 2004, the number of suicide attacks launched from the West Bank had fallen by 84% in less than two years. (Figures from Sir Martin Gilbert's updated Israel, A History, p. 631.) Since Sizer neither mourns these Israeli dead nor condemns (or even acknowledges) their killers, and instead denounces the structure designed to protect Israelis as a symbol of racist imperialism, it is hard not to conclude that he has no objection to Israelis being killed. (This is not to deny that the wall undoubtedly causes serious hardship and suffering to the Palestinians; nor that the wall cuts into land beyond the Green Line, which could otherwise have been allocated to a future Palestinian state.)
... ever more ...
Sadly, this is not an isolated instance in Sizer's book. At page 8, the Union of Jewish Students (i.e. your friendly local J-Soc) is cast as an opponent of intellectual freedom. On page 10, Sizer asks, "Why is Israel allowed to retain nuclear weapons, while Iran is threatened with a pre-emptive attack for aspiring to obtain nuclear technology?", yet inexcusably fails to mention that Iran's president has denied the first Holocaust and has threatened to perpetrate a second. At footnote 12 on page 6, Sizer draws on the conspiracy theories of Mearsheimer and Walt. In a footnote on page 15, he refers approvingly to the flawed and highly partisan works of Jimmy Carter and Ilan Pappe, and also to Uri Davis, a PLO observer member who helped to promote the antisemitic play "Perdition" in the 1980s, which alleged that Zionist leaders collaborated with the Nazis in perpetrating the Holocaust.
despicably (click here for the antisemitic article*)
Sadly, this in keeping with an author who demonises supporters of Israel as "people in the shadows" and for whom Uri Davis, neo-Nazi favourite Israel Shahak and Holocaust-denier-defender and intellectual crook Noam Chomsky are "leading Jewish academics". For all that Sizer says that "Anti-Semitism must be repudiated unequivocally" (p. 15), some of his terminology and sources seem to point in the other direction. It is surely not a coincidence that, in 2015, Stephen Sizer was censured by Andrew Watson, the Bishop of Guil[d]ford, for posting "clearly anti-Semitic material" on social media.
Saddest of all, though, is the fact that, Zion's Christian Soldiers? has, like Sizer's previous book, been published by Inter-Varsity Press, a reputable Christian publishing house, and has been endorsed by various prominent Christian leaders, including Dick Lucas and Rico Tice. One might not expect reviewers to check every source and factual assertion (though we might hope that a responsible publisher would), but frankly this is of little comfort to those of us who are Jewish, who recognise antisemitism when we see it, and who are all too aware of what antisemitism has led to through the centuries....'
*When will Sizer clear out that Augean stable?!

Tuesday, 5 June 2018

UK Antisemitism: Oh, look, Sizer's talking!

I wonder whether the CEO of theegregiously one-sided so-called Peacemaker Trust will be sporting this cool new look when he addresses the predictable band of anti-Israel fiends in London this coming Al Quds Day.


To quote from today's report by Lee Harpin in the Jewish Chronicle:
 '... The Reverend ...  will join notorious anti-Zionist Mick Napier, of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, as a speaker at Sunday’s annual demonstration.
Mr Sizer’s presence at the Al Quds Day event will cause widespread anger among Jewish communal organisations and follows last week’s announcement by the Metropolitan Police that they are powerless to stop the flying of the flag of Iranian-led terror organisation Hezbollah on the march.
In December 2015, the Church of England condemned Dr Sizer for sharing material which was “clearly antisemitic”.
Before he became Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn had defended him saying Mr Sizer was being victimised because he “dared to speak out against Zionism.”
Last year, Mr Napier was found guilty of aggressive behaviour at a protest outside an Israeli-owned cosmetics store in Glasgow during the 2014 Gaza war.
Last week, the JC revealed the Met Police, in answer to a letter from MP Louise Ellman, the vice-chair of the Labour Friends of Israel, said that they had to allow the controversial flag to be raised once again at Sunday’s parade because parliament had “consciously chosen” to proscribe only the military wing of Hezbollah – but the group’s flag is “shared across all elements of that organisation.”
Metropolitan Police Commander Jane Conners said in her letter of reply that both she and Commissioner Cressida Dick “share concerns” that the raising of the Hezbollah flag on London’s streets “may be construed as belonging to a terrorist organisation.”
At last year’s Al Quds Day march, the JC revealed  how Nazim Hussein Ali, an Islamic Human Rights Commission speaker,  linked the Grenfell Tower tragedy to “Zionists” and calling for Israel’s annihilation at this year’s Al Quds Day march.
Following complaints about Mr Ali’s conduct – and the open display of Hezbollah flags – the Metropolitan Police confirmed it was investigating allegations of antisemitic comments made during the protest by Mr Ali.
But in December the Crown Prosecution Service had he would not face prosecution.'
I'm not so sure that
'Mr Sizer’s presence at the Al Quds Day event will cause widespread anger among Jewish communal organisations'
 The Jewish Chronicle seems somewhat ill-informed about Sizer (it turned down my screenshot of that notorious 9/11 post telling ms it was not interested, only to have its free London rival, the Jewish News, snap the proferred screenshot up), it seems ignorant of the vicar's proper designation, Dr, and it appears unaware that since he now has no pulpit, he is likely to make him less of a perceived thorn in Anglo-Jewry's side by the latter's communal leaders than if he was under the jurisdiction of a bishop.

Will he reprise this casual outfit, the one he wore when denouncing Israel at the Al Quds Day rally in London six years ago (that's Mr Ali in the background, incidentally)?

 

Or will he go for the full cassock, as favoured by his antipodean chum, Anglican priest Father Dave Smith, on an Al Quds Day Down Under more recently?


 Meanwhile, quick off the mark, the vicar has posted this, put up today by the Amos Trust and other enemies of Israel:




Go here and we find more information about this event:
London Protest Tuesday 5th June
Free Palestine – Stop the Killing – Stop Arming Israel
5.30pm. Assemble Opposite Number 10 Downing Street, Whitehall, London – March to Old Palace Yard.
Organised by: Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Muslim Association of Britain.
Supported by: Stop the War Coalition, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Europal Forum, Amos Trust, UNISON, Lib Dem Friends of Palestine, The Green Party.
Join us on this day of solidarity actions for the Great Return March in Palestine, with events around the country.
Please bring Keys with you to symbolise the Nakba and the Right of Return. With respect and in line with the decision of the organisers of the Great Return March in Palestine, to demonstrate full unity, we would like to ask everybody to bring Palestinian flags only.
[Emphasis added.  In other words, leave the Hezbollah flags at home!]
https://www.facebook.com/events/103692723847506/
More info: www.palestinecampaign.org/great-march-return
What a nerve this cleric, who posted this excrescence


and regularly posts such items as this 


should have the chutzpah to criticise people like Jonathan Arkush, the outgoing president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, for voicing concerns about antisemitism.  (Mr Arkush said he was not suggesting the Archbishop “is not a strong and sincere friend of the Jewish people. “My statement in the Telegraph interview was very specific, and referred only to the EnoughIsEnough protest against the antisemitism in the Labour Party.")


Does the vicar approve of these two sentiments, the first below the identical post on his Peacemaker Trust page, and the second by the commenter on her own page?  Decidedly dodgy comments, eh? 



To judge by what he allows commenters on his own page to get away with (I've given many examples over the years), it would seem that "the Church of England takes antisemitism very seriously" does not represent him, or the followers in question would surely long since have been defriended.)

While Jews seem to be fair game, "Islamophobia" is by contrast taken very seriously by our old friend.

He would seem to know his constituency, after all.

See above article here  

See above article here

See above article here

Strange bedfellows, Muslims and Christians, but of course politics breeds strange bedfellows. The role of Sizer's so-called Peacemaker Trust in pushing Chrislam and Christian Palestinianism's agenda and weakening western support for Israel should not be underestimated. 

By the same token, Christian friends of Israel should be cherished and not be taken for granted.