Christian Friends of Israel – and Christian Foes

They’re really pulling out all the stops these days – those perverse Christians who seem to detest the existence of Israel. Last week the Quakers’ headquarters in Manchester hosted both Israel-basher Gideon Levy of Ha’aretz and – like so many Christian places of worship up and down the British Isles – Rod Cox's notorious Israel-demonising exhibition of children’s drawings from Gaza. "Greenbelt", a four-day musical festival at Cheltenham Racecourse that began this past weekend, organised by Christian groups with a pro-Palestinian agenda including Christian Aid and – fresh from their June call to boycott produce from “illegal” West Bank settlements – the Methodists, asks the 12,800 people attending to “confront the stark contrast” between the festival and the “day-to-day life” of Gazans.

Replacement theology and Successionism is undermining Israel, and many Christians have been seduced by Naim Ateek, founder of the Palestinian Christian organisation Sabeel, who denies that the “Old Testament” justifies Zionism and has made conflicting statements regarding Israel’s right to exist. Churches have produced one-sided reports about the situation in the Middle East that depict Hamas as a charitable organisation, completely overlooking its terrorist credentials and its antisemitic genocidal Charter. There’s even a tendency in some quarters to twist reality for political purposes and depict Jesus as a Palestinian rather than as a Judean. In London both the Bloomsbury Baptist Church and St James’s Church, Piccadilly, hold carol services in conjunction with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign with the words to well-known carols altered to demonise Israel.


And so on.

Yesterday, I blogged about how certain Welsh politicians are aiding and abetting with gusto the Palestine Solidarity Campaign branch in Wales, and although I hope to blog in the future about Christian philosemitism and Christian pro-Zionism generally, today I’ll remain within the Principality (yes, there are still some of us who call Wales by that correct term, even if the BBC long ago instructed its journalists to avoid the term for fear of offending anti-monarchists!) since the behaviour of leading clergymen in the Church in Wales (the Welsh Anglicans ) is really quite outrageously biased against Israel.

David Lloyd George, that famous Manchester-born Welshman who presided over the Cabinet that promulgated the Balfour Declaration in 1917, once noted that "I was brought up in a school where I was taught far more about the history of the Jews than about the history of my own land. I could tell you all about the kings of Israel. But I doubt whether I could have named half a dozen of the kings of England and not more of the kings of Wales .... On five days a week in the day school, and ... in our Sunday schools, we were thoroughly versed in the history of the Hebrews."

Like other members of his Cabinet, Lloyd George was a philosemite. Although he joked that "Acetone converted me to Zionism" (a reference to Chaim Weizmann’s discovery of that substance, which so crucially aided the British war effort), Lloyd George’s receptivity to the idea of a restored Jewish Homeland in Eretz Israel was embedded in his religious upbringing. Of the Jews, he said:

"You belong to a very great race which has made the deepest impression on the destinies of humanity .... Your poets, kings and warriors are better known to the children and adults of Wales than are the names of our own heroes!... You may say you have been oppressed and persecuted – that has been your power! You have been hammered into very fine steel, and that is why you can never be broken."

To Lloyd George, the Balfour Declaration was ‘"a charter of of equality for the Jews.... They belong to a ... race that has endured persecution which for the variety of torture – physical, material, and mental, inflicted on its victims, for the virulence and malignity with which it has been sustained, for the length of time it has lasted, and, more than all, for the fortitude and patience with which it has been suffered, is without parallel in the history of any other people. Is it too much to ask that amongst them whose sufferings are the worst shall be able to find refuge in the land of their fathers made holy by the splendour of their genius, the loftiness of their thoughts, by the consecration of their loves, and by the inspirations of their messages to mankind?"

Another Welsh philosemite, the Calvinistic Methodist minister Rev. John Mills, whose book The British Jews (1862) remains an invaluable historical resource, was among the small group of Jews and non-Jews who in 1852 founded the Association for Promoting Jewish Settlement in Palestine. They aimed at establishing a self-administering Jewish colony between those sacred cities, Safed and Tiberias, with livestock and equipment funded by public subscription. In seeking such support, they remarked that "whilst Palestine has such significance in the eyes of the Christians, with how much greater interest must it be regarded by the Jew? ... towards it he yet gravitates as to his natural centre." And at a meeting of Welsh ex-pats held in London in 1854, Mills declared: "To speak my whole heart, I believe Palestine belongs to the Jews. The Almighty promised it to Abraham of old ... and have it they shall."

Fast forward to our own day, and although I’m sure that Wales still has pro-Zionists a-plenty, some very disturbing developments are gathering pace in that section of the Anglican Communion known as the Church in Wales.

A claim that “the Jews are cowards” made on the Church in Wales’s Jubilee Fund website in 2002 remained there for a year despite innumerable objections, including a complaint from Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams, himself a Welshman, about the “deplorable” and “inflammatory language about Jews”. In brazen contrast, complaints regarding the publication of an “Irish joke” in a parish magazine was followed by an official apology from the vicar of the parish concerned. And when the Church in Wales’s Welsh-language magazine carried a cartoon offensive to Muslims, the Archbishop of Wales, Barry Morgan, gathered up all available copies himself and went on television to apologise to Muslims. But when the same magazine printed a questionable spoof concerning Jews no such action was forthcoming.

Despite the suffering that terrorist Arafat inflicted on Israelis, Archbishop Morgan declared that he’d remember the dead leader for his perseverance and resolve. For the Church in Wales, Israel’s use of force to defend its citizens is “revenge violence” and excuses are made for Palestinian attacks on Israelis. When, during Operation Cast Lead, a mobile dental health clinic paid for by the Church in Wales and supporters including the Palestine Solidarity Campaign was destroyed, Morgan took it for granted that the IDF was deliberately inhumane: "We find it incomprehensible and tragic that any armed forces anywhere in the world would want to destroy such a building, let alone the State of Israel with all its historic memories of oppression and genocide.... It does raise questions about the credibility of Israel’s values and purposes."

Then there was the Christmas message that year from Dominic Walker, Bishop of Monmouth: "God so loved the world that he sent Jesus to be born in Palestine”. Indeed, in a series of short films made in Wales and the Holy Land in 2009 by St David’s Diocese for use in a teaching course, the word “Israel” appears only once, Arabs – not Jews – are prominently featured, and major Biblical figures, including prophets and disciples, are not identified as Jews.

This month, Canon Robin Morrison, a member of the Church in Wales’s Strategic International Affairs Group, inspired, it seems, by Prime Minister David Cameron’s description of Gaza as a “prison camp”, came out all guns – or rather computer keys – blazing, with a long denunciation of Israel (Western Mail, 4 August 2010).

“Any critical voice from the churches is condemned as anti-Semitic,” he thundered, “ and this ploy has dangerous implications for the Jewish community throughout the world. It equates all Jews with present Israeli policy and forgets that Jews aren’t the only people with a Semitic background.” Deftly done – this “the Arabs are Semites too” business; we hear it from foes of Israel, who should know – especially when they are well-educated senior clergymen – that the term antisemitism (the hyphen is frowned upon these days) was coined by a German Jew-hater specifically in relation to Jews, and to Jews alone. (Perhaps we should all prefer the term judeophobia, so that the canon and his ilk cannot resort to that particular “ploy”.)  I suppose this is what over-reliance on Sabeel's narrative does to these clergy.

He concedes that “Security, of course, is a legitimate matter for Israel and is indivisible in the wider region” but then descends into claptrap: “But, ironically, by isolating their security needs from other countries’, they decrease their chances of long-term stability and security and appear arrogantly insensitive to other people’s needs.”

And then comes the malevolent, politically charged crux of his message:

'The blockade of Gaza, which continues, despite recent adjustments, is still defended as necessary for Israel’s security. But the argument was used to prevent the import of cement to rebuild the very buildings Israeli tanks destroyed in their last massive invasion of Gaza! If Israel continues to use this argument, there is a serious risk of moral hypocrisy. If Israel asserts its rights to prevent arms getting to Gaza, then the international community and the Palestinians should assert their rights to blockade Israel to prevent American arms arriving there. It is these weapons that not only threatened and killed thousands in Gaza and the Southern Lebanon but destroyed crucial infrastructure. Israel always asks international commentators to be even-handed. The just and fair logic of this implies we should now call for an international blockade of arms into Israel or those manufactured there.

This would include any nuclear weapons Israel has and we should call on the international WMD inspectors to now visit Israel. We should ask for even-handedness and justice. If the West objects to Iran’s development of nuclear weapons capability, they must equally object to Israel’s. Being a “democratic” country, of course, Israel should welcome such inspectors and such discussion.'

(They just don’t get it, do they – or perhaps they do – that Israel is under existential threat, that Israel has a right and an obligation to defend itself?)

And then there’s this, with a snide reference to the Shoah for added effect – is this what the canon preaches from the pulpit, one wonders – this mean-spirited message?

‘There is something extraordinary about this level of moral hypocrisy. Given all that Jewish people have experienced through the Holocaust, oppression and injustice, it is hard to understand how the State of Israel has become so insensitive. More, too many statements by recent prime ministers of Israel, and their ambassadors, have included racist language about Israel as “founded for the Jews” in an exclusive way. This would be unacceptable in other democratic countries and goes against the values of multiculturalism and diversity, regardless of religious background....In any other situation, this would be named as “racism”. Israel knows how difficult it is for us to use such a word, because they were victims of Nazi racial ideology.

Yet the facts are the facts. Israel claims to be and is supported by America as being the only democratic country in the region, but democratic countries do not normally build walls, occupy other people’s territory and do not lock up people in barbed wire barriers, checkpoints and blockades. Where they do, there is usually international condemnation.

....The last invasion of Lebanon, where thousands were killed and displaced, and the airport and major infrastructure destroyed, was Israel’s reaction to the kidnapping of a few of its soldiers. It was Israel that created the conditions for Hamas to appear, and yet Israel apparently is blind to the hostility it creates by its “disproportionate” actions, creating enemies not allies in the region. British political leadership has, in recent years, refused to utter the word “disproportionate”. ...Israel is a secular state with many different shades of Judaism within it. If secular Zionism still claims a right to the land, over the Palestinians, then it should take the morality in its history more seriously. The possession of the land “flowing with milk and honey”, achieved through the conquest and destruction of other peoples, came from a sense of promise, calling and responsibility combined. It is that responsibility “to be a light to lighten the nations” which the actions of modern Israel has so discredited.’

At several locations online there’s an impressive essay on Christian antisemitism written in 2009 by Mike Fryer, a sterling pro-Israel clergyman from Mold, Flintshire, and I’d like to quote you a few paragraphs from it (but do read it all), as they capture so well what is transpiring:

‘Many in Christendom today are using charity and good works to re-enforce in the minds of many Muslim fundamentalists that Islam has the right and even a duty to take land from the Jewish people and establish a homeland for themselves. They are referring to land, which the Jewish people by right, by international law and by religion are entitled to possess.

“Christian” organizations such as Sabeel and Christian Aid speak openly in favor of a Palestinian homeland and use terms such as an “oppressive Israel regime” and “Israeli Occupation”; Church denominations such as the Church in Wales, the Anglican Communion, Methodists and Presbyterians have all spoken of divestment of Israel and support the Palestinian cause to create another state within the confines of the land of Israel. These and many other church organizations, such as the Vineyard, are encouraging governments to negotiate with terrorists ... [and] have eagerly moved away from the term antisemitism and now use the term anti-Zionism. What is the difference? By using the former you can be called a racist and prosecuted but the term anti-Zionism is not perceived in the same way and although it means the same it is, in this current political climate, “acceptable”.'

He continues:

‘In the town in which I live an anti-Israel play was performed at our local theatre. I led some other Christians for Zion supporters as we stood at the door to the theater and gave out leaflets, not criticizing anyone but stating facts. Many local church leaders and Christian groups attended the play and were obviously opposed to our stance. We found it difficult that many who teach from their pulpits that we are always to seek truth actually ignored the truths in our message….

Three years ago I attended a meeting at which a Church in Wales canon was speaking about the situation in Israel. There were a number of clergy present, none of whom knew me. I listened to lie after lie encouraging the audience to sympathize with Islam and the Palestinian people, and to see Israel as an aggressive regime, hell bent on persecuting the Palestinian people. At the end of the presentation there was a time for questions. At the conclusion of a stream of pro-Palestinian questions, I asked some pertinent questions which showed that the speaker was aware that he was not telling the truth about the actual matters he was referring to. The meeting was immediately stopped and worried clergy, thinking I was a journalist surrounded me in an effort to find out what the purpose of my attendance was.’

Luckily, there are those engaged in a fightback, including that splendid organisation, Anglican Friends of Israel, which has issued a ringing denunciation of Canon Morrison’s shameful outburst and which itemised the church’s shenanigans in a report dated 18 January this year, entitled “A Purged Jesus in the Church in Wales?” “The Scriptures themselves say that 'Salvation comes from the Jews', the report concluded, “and senior figures in the Church of Wales might reflect on whether they are in danger of uprooting Jesus from the Jewish soil which bore Him.” “We cannot afford to stand by in our churches and allow Israel to be ignored, abused or opposed by a twisted or misinterpreted theology,” says the Rev. Fryer. “We cannot stand by whilst ministers in Christian churches or Christian organisations encourage and fund a concerted effort to destroy Israel and those who support her.”

A Corker of a Philosemite

Ireland is not a country very often associated with matters Jewish, despite some interesting Jewish characters who have dotted the pages of its modern history. There was, for instance, Polish-born Rabbi Aaron the Scribe, who resided in Dublin during the late seventeenth century before serving, for a time, as Rabbi of London. There was Ellen, Countess of Desart, born to wealthy German-Jewish immigrant parents in England; although remaining loyal to Judaism, she married an Irish peer and became one of the first two female members of the Senate of the Irish Free State following that country’s creation in 1921. There was Cork journalist Sophie O'Brien, née Raffalovich, the Odessa-born daughter of a Jewish banker; she converted to Catholicism, married an Irish nationalist politician, and embraced the Irish cause. There was Isaac Herzog, Chief Rabbi of Ireland from 1919-36 and later Chief Rabbi of Israel, of which country his son Chaim became President. And there was Russian-born shochet’s son Robert Briscoe, an Irish nationalist who served as Lord Mayor of his native Dublin for two terms during the 1950s and 1960s; a strong supporter of Vladimir Jabotinsky, he assisted the Irgun, and in 1948 visited the newly created State of Israel with Irish President Eamon de Valera.

And then there’s that famous fictional Irish Jew Leopold Bloom, protagonist of Dublin writer James Joyce’s Ulysses. Many literary-minded visitors to the city follow the route taken on ‘Bloomsday’ (16 June 1904) by Leopold.

I was reminded of all this because, over the past week, a talented philosemitic Irish girl has been the talk and the toast of the pro-Israel blogosphere. She’s 19-year-old Cliona Campbell, a non-Jewish student from Cork who’s been fascinated by Jews and Israel for half her life.  Under the auspices of the volunteering project group Sar-El, she recently completed a two-month stint working at military bases in Israel. She felt impelled to volunteer after seeing the unfair way in which the media portrayed Operation Cast Lead – she was indignant at the lack of compassion with Israel’s civilians, who had endured rocket attacks from Gaza for years before the military operation was launched. On her return to the Emerald Isle Cliona wrote an enthusiastic account of her experiences in her local paper, the Evening Echo (16 July 2010), which includes the following:

“Being in Israel during the ‘Flotilla Incident’ was one of the most sobering experiences I have ever encountered. I was stationed in the north of Israel at the time, far away from the events on the high seas, yet the aftershock reverberated throughout the country. Our ‘madricha’, the soldier responsible for us volunteers, greeted us after the flag-raising ceremony that morning in an uncharacteristically depressed mood. Her voice quivered as she told us what happened.... As the ‘madricha’ spoke, tears welled in her eyes — not of anger, but of despair. It was a hopeless situation — either weapons would be smuggled into Gaza, thus supplying ammunition to Hamas’ terror campaign, or else when the Israeli Defence Forces intervened to stop them it would be a propaganda victory for the ‘innocent peace political — the Gazans are far from needy. During the last 18 months, more than one million tons of humanitarian supplies entered Gaza from Israel, equalling nearly one ton of aid for every man, woman and child. We volunteers were dumb-founded as we scrolled through our phones and read western media reports, each one damning Israel for ‘impeding humanitarian aid’. Shortly after the flotilla incident, I attended a peaceful demonstration outside the Turkish embassy in Israel, and as Israeli flags whirled above our heads, we all chimed with heartfelt sincerity “kol hakavod Yisrael” — “Well done, Israel.”

See the entire article and photos of Cliona in Israel here http://dublin.mfa.gov.il/mfm/Data/184077.pdf

Troublingly, as a result of her support for Israel, Cliona has received insults and threats. "I came back after two months and wrote a piece [see above link] on my experiences. Now I am getting hate mail and being targeted. I went into a clothes shop where I live and the security guard came up to me abusing me. My Facebook page link was posted online in a forum and I started getting emails telling me to keep my head down from now on. My friends started getting abusive emails soon after that too."

In Ireland, there’s a great deal of animosity towards Israel in certain circles, and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign there has the reputation of being particularly inflexible and embittered. The anti-Israel movement is fostered in Ireland, as in the UK, by a strange alliance of hardline left-wingers and radical Muslims. Not all Muslims are Islamists, of course. “We in the Irish Muslim community have on the whole felt part and parcel of the wider Irish society for decades; this is the country where many of us emigrated to in pursuit of a better life and opportunities; or fleeing persecution, and freedom from religious, ethnic or political discrimination”, wrote one concerned Muslim to an Irish newspaper. “The majority of us are grateful for the opportunities afforded to us by this nation and not only do we respect the ideals of the democracy that we live in but also cherish them....” The ultra-conservative Islamic Cultural Centre of Ireland, situated at Clonskeagh, Dublin, is said to have links to the Muslim Brotherhood, and as elsewhere in Europe, radical Muslims in Eire advocate the adoption of sharia law. An anti-American, anti-British Muslim surgeon in Dublin has been quoted as saying that flags should not be burned at demonstrations “Unless someone wants to burn the Zionist flag since we do not recognise the Zionist state". http://www.markhumphrys.com/islam.ireland.html

The accompanying picture has an eloquence all of its own. No wonder one of the many blogs about the admirable Ms Campbell  is entitled “How Can We Clone Cliona?”

The not-so-Midnight Cowboy: A Zola for our times?

Decades ago, a distinguished cinema and television critic observed that Jon Voight, "who became famous for playing a dumb Texas stud ... is actually a university-educated, self-conscious New York intellectual".  A staunch Republican, Voight is also a long-standing supporter of Israel, and like the most steadfast champions of the Jewish people he is a genuine philosemite who stands with Israel not merely out of regret for Jewish victimhood but out of admiration for what Jews have given to the world. 

In Israel to celebrate the 60th anniversary of its foundation, he glowingly described the Jewish State as a "moral beacon", and the following year, having seen Hamas rockets landing in Sderot, he castigated Jane Fonda and others who had signed a petition denouncing Operation Cast Lead: "Did Israel not give the Palestinians of Gaza hope that there could be peace?  In response, did Hamas not launch rockets from Gaza into Israel, killing many innocent people?". 

A week ago his "Open Letter" to President Obama  appeared in the Washington Times (22 June 2010), and reflects the fear, fury, and frustration that many Israel-supporters within and outside the United States feel as they contemplate a White House administration that seems to lack empathy with Israel's legitimate interests and well-founded concerns, that seems determined to pursue a naive and futile engagement with the Islamic world at Israel's expense and which in the pursuit of appeasement seems meekly to have accepted the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran :

You will be the first American president that lied to the Jewish people, and the American people as well, when you said that you would defend Israel, the only democratic state in the Middle East, against all their enemies.  You have done just the opposite.  You have propagandized Israel, until they look like they are everyone's enemy - and it has resonated throughout the world.  You are putting Israel in harm's way, and you have promoted anti-Semitism throughout the world.  You have brought this to a people who have given the world the Ten Commandments and most laws we live by today.  The Jewish people have given the world our greatest scientists and philosophers, and the cures for many diseases, and now you play a very dangerous game so you can look like a true martyr to what you see and say are the underdogs.  But the underdogs you defend are murderers and criminals who want Israel eradicated.... I pray to God you stop... With heartfelt and deep concern for America and Israel.

 Surely it is not hyperbolic to suggest an echo here of "J'accuse!", Emile Zola's famous letter in L'Aurore in 1898 to France's President Faure during the Dreyfus Affair? Many learned pundits around the globe have repeatedly warned in all kinds of media about the danger that the tone and thrust of Obama's foreign policy poses for Israel.  There are suspicions that Obama is currently softening his line on Israel in order not to alienate the "Israel Lobby" ahead of November's congressional election, and that once the election is out of the way his line will harden perilously.  Who knows?  Perhaps, given today's cult of celebrity, a letter from an ageing movie star -  who is, after all, Angelina Jolie's father - will be the catalyst that crystallises public opinion in Israel's favour and sees the expected betrayal of Israel averted.  If so, a latter-day Zola will be the Midnight Cowboy's finest role!

      

Bravo Senor Aznar and the Friends of Israel Initiative!

Amid the irrational and ominous hubbub of hatred for Israel that has followed the defensive raid on the flotilla vessel Mavi Marmara, a compelling voice of sanity has emerged from Spain.  On 17 June The Times of London carried a splendid, stirring op-ed piece from Jose Maria Aznar, the tough-on-terror realist who served as Spanish prime minister from 1996-2004 (pictured with Ehud Barak in Israel in 2001).

The title of his article speaks for itself, "If Israel goes down, we all go down".  True to his word, Senor Aznar - with nine other prominent people including British statesman and Nobel laureate David Trimble and America's ex-ambassador to the UN John Barton, has formed a group called Friends of Israel, which recently issued a petition robustly and movingly defending the Jewish State and inviting "all men and women of goodwill to join us".  In sum, the petitioners pledge themselves

To combat the delegitimization of the State of Israel at home, abroad and inside the institutions of the international community; to publicly show our solidarity with Israel's democratic institutions - the legitimate expression of the Jewish people's milennial [sic] aspiration to live in peace and freedom in its national homeland; to support Israel's inalienable right to secure borders  unmolested by terrorists or tyrannical regimes so that its citizens can continue living with the same guarantees that our own societies enjoy; to consistently and firmly oppose the prospect of a nuclear armed Iran; to work to ensure that Israel is fully accepted as a normal Western country, an essential and indivisible part of the Western world to which we belong; to reaffirm the value of the religious, moral and cultural Judeo-Christian heritage as the main source of the liberal and democratic western societies.

The petition - this clarion call to justice - already has over 5500 signatures.  It is available here:
http://www.friendsofisraelinitiative.org/index.php