"Israelis Want To Maintain The Idea That ... The Church Is Siding With Zionism Against Islam": anti-"Islamophobia" Christians gunning for Israel

"Over the course of its history, the WCC [World Council of Churches] – an umbrella organization of 350 Protestant and Orthodox churches – has worked assiduously to demonize the Jewish state while remaining silent about the sins of its adversaries. It has also made bowing and scraping in the face of Islamic violence a central plank of modern-day ecumenism. Speaking up forcefully on behalf of the victims of such violence is simply beyond the ken of the WCC. The organization is simply incapable of speaking the truth about this problem."

That justifiable indictment is made by the Christian Media Analyst at the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, Dexter Van Zile, in his article (hat tip: reader Ian) about the WCC's just-concluded conference in Lebanon.

Van Zile goes on:

'The WCC set itself up for failure even before the conference began. Prior to the conference, which lasted from May 21st to May 25th, the WCC described the upcoming meeting about Christians in the Middle East as giving voice to “ecumenical Christian concerns about the presence of Christians in the Middle East” which the organization stated, “differ from those who seek to kindle Islamophobia.”

The May 15th press release announcing the meeting also reported that the speakers would include Palestinian diplomats Afif Safieh and Samir Morcos, and a former assistant to Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, a man who has utterly failed to protect Coptic Christians in their homeland.

This pre-conference press release, issued on May 15th, served as fair warning that meeting’s attendees would sweep the problem of Islamist violence under the rug and then accuse anyone who would talk openly about the impact of jihad against Christians in the Middle East of being Islamophobes. It also served as fair warning that the attendees would try to steer the conversation toward Israel.

And that is exactly what happened.

In the statement issued after the conference, the attendees lamented the kidnapping of two Christian clergy in Syria and said they “pray and hope that their speedy release, and assistance of the leaders of Muslim and Christian communities, will strengthen inter-religious co-operation.” The leaders in question are still in custody.

The reference to the captivity of these two leaders was about the only mention of Muslim wrongdoing in the document, which condemned Christian Zionism as an ideology that enables “the manipulation of public opinion by Zionist lobbies, and damage[s] intra-Christian relations.” ....'

Read the entire article here

As reader Ian added, regarding a book mentioned in the article and published, in 2000, with the WCC's assistance (Jutta Sperber’s book Christians and Muslims: The Dialogue Activities of the World Council of Churches and their Theological Foundation):

'The book is also pretty revealing. In her assessment of the WCC’s dialogue with Muslim leaders, Sperber gives the game away:

“The solution of the Palestinian problem in the sense of the West’s abandoning its pro-Israeli attitude became the criterion to judge the credibility of the Christian/Muslim dialogue, and indeed, of inter-religious dialogue in general. This attitude was not only adopted by Muslims but also by Arab Christians.”

In other words, if the WCC was going to have good relations with Muslim leaders, it needed to attack Israel’s supporters in the West.'

On reading the above article I thought, inevitably, of the recent, notorious Church of Scotland report that seeks to undermine Jewish claims to Eretz Israel by disavowing Scripture itself.

I see that anti-Christian Zionism crusader, Anglican vicar Stephen Sizer ("Don't bother blogging about him, he's not worth a pitcher of warm spit" advises one friend), has been talking up the report's significance to a reporter from the propaganda channel of the Ahmadinejad regime, on which he (who's visited Iran twice, I understand) not infrequently appears.

"It's news that the Israelis don't want because they want to maintain the idea that they have the Church in their pocket, that the Church is siding with Zionism against Islam – well, this report questions that premise," the clerical anti-Israel warrior explains to the already highly opinionated Amina Taylor in that deceptively soft voice of his:

And he appears on Press TV a little later to help justify BDS:

But what, I wonder, do Sizer and the rest of the Israel-demonisers (sorry, human rights activists), religious and secular, who readily give interviews to Iran's Press TV excoriating the little Jewish State and attempting to justify BDS make of such reports as this, and this:

'The attacks against Baha'is in Iran represent one of the clearest cases of state-sponsored religious persecution in the world, said Heiner Bielefeldt, the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief.

Speaking 6 March 2013 in Geneva at a side event during the 22nd session of the Human Rights Council, Dr. Bielefeldt discussed the release of a new report by the Baha'i International Community, which documents rising violence against Iranian Baha'is and the utter impunity enjoyed by attackers.

 "It's really one of the most obvious cases of state persecution," he said, noting that the repression faced by Baha'is spans "all areas of state activity, from family law provisions to schooling, education, and security."

He asked participants at the side event – which drew some 50 representatives from governments, the UN, and non-governmental organizations – to visualize the impact such wide-ranging persecution has on an individual as he or she moves through the stages of life.

 "Imagine what that means for a child, in school, maybe even kindergarten, sometimes even in the preschool phase, of young life. To be exposed to the stigma, to be told there is something wrong with your family, that you have to change, you have to adapt ...Then, as the child gets to the age of higher education, now the problem is how to get access ... We have lots of cases of Baha'is who have been expelled from universities and other sectors of higher education. Imagine what it means if a person wants to gather position in life, to get a job. There is not the slightest possibility for a Baha'i to take a position in any public sector [job]. But even in the private sector, there is mobbing and stigmatization."

"How can a person start a family life, if in family law there is no official space for Baha'is to conclude valid marriages?" he asked, noting that this deficiency affects concerns ranging from inheritance to rights of custody.

 Attacks do not even end with death, he added. "There is the experience of desecration of cemeteries... [of] cemeteries being also bulldozed down by someone."

Pointing to the report, titled "Violence with Impunity: Acts of aggression against Iran's Baha'i community," Dr. Bielefeldt said that the increasing violence against Iranian Baha'is – and the degree to which attackers escape prosecution for their crimes – is clear.

"Not only do Baha'is have to expect a lack of protection – government agencies are very often inimical, hostile forces."'

Israel, Zionism, and the Churches

This is an article by Professor Paul C. Merkley, an American academic who has authored several books on Christian attitudes to Jews. Written in 2005, and originally posted on the Israpundit blog, the article remains as timely today as it was then, in view of the complicity of some churches in the odious campaign of BDS against the Jewish State:

The present campaign of the churches is not about the wall nor about divestment: it is about Israel’s right-to-life.

At annual conventions of several of the major Christian denominations in the North America, Britain and Europe held during these last few months, statements have been written into the record calling upon Israel to dismantle her security barrier and declarations have been passed of intent to divest the denominations’ pension fund portfolios of investments in Israeli firms and other firms doing business with Israel.

Behind these many ostensibly disparate decisions is a well-organized campaign of contempt against Israel. In these past few weeks, and with these actions, the leadership of the major denominations has taken a coordinated step beyond hostility to a nation with a right to defend her good name to active engagement in the campaign to foreclose her right-to-life.

The present campaign first came to the surface with announcement by the Presbyterian Church (USA) at its General Assembly in July, 2004 of its intention "to have its Board of Pensions divest itself of investments in companies receiving one million dollars or more in profits per year from investments in Israel or that have invested more than one million dollars or more in Israel." Some truly prize-winning double talk was expended on that occasion by the Stated Clerk of the denomination in the effort to explain that this was really not as provocative as it sounded --that the divestment would be "phased and selective," unfolding by stages - as if that made a moral difference. In justification of its decision, the Presbyterians offered an efficient summation of the last half-century of history: "The occupation... has proven to be at the root of the evil acts committed against innocent people on both sides." Solution: "The occupation must end."

The Presbyterian Assembly (USA) is one of those denominations which our alert, group-thinking journalists still refer to as "mainstream" because they commanded the support of a majority of American Protestants half a century ago! Like the other "mainstreamers," the Presbyterians have suffered a steady decline in membership in our lifetime. The Presbyterian Church (USA), for example, had 5 million members in the 1920s - which made it the fifth-largest denomination, when the population of the United States was just over 100 million; it has around 3 million today - which makes it the tenth largest denomination when the population is around 300 million.) There are no doubt many reasons for this, but the one that screams out is that the leaders of these mainstream Protestant denominations have pursued courses of policy which do not have the support of their congregations. They have, in other words, succumbed to elitism: the leaders simply take their positions on public issues from academics in the universities and from the media elites, ignoring the views of their own parishioners.

For a while it seemed that there was sufficient unhappiness about this proposal of the Presbyterian leaders that it would be withdrawn quietly after a decent interval. Apart from everything else, divestment of healthy stocks at work in the ever-growing Israeli economy, could not be considered good financial stewardship -- especially since these very same denominations are losing members weekly (for quite other reasons, having to do with theology and moral philosophy) and consequently are suffering decline of the cash-flow upon which present salaries, not to mention future pensions, will depend. In the Universities (where they have Mathematics and Accounting Departments) the divestment mania crested and then declined, just about the time that the Churches got on board. But just since the beginning of this year the campaign has come back. This very month (August 2005) the Presbyterian Church (USA) announces that it will insist that four companies that it considers helpful to Israel in its occupation of Palestine stop doing business with Israel: millions of dollars of Church pension funds are said to be at stake. And now the United Church of Christ (USA) and the Episcopal Church (USA) have recently voted to consider actions along the same lines. These actions follow a declaration from the World Council of Churches (WCC) in February urging all member bodies to consider taking such actions. The Anglican Consultative Council, headed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Willams, voted unanimously in favour of divestment from Israel at their meeting in England June, 2005.

Episcopal Bishop Thomas Shaw of Massachusetts, who considers himself a supporter of Palestinian rights, has warned against these actions, on the ground that "the economics of Israel and Palestine are so closely intertwined that divestment is actually counterproductive for the Palestinian people." In the same vein, a group of Episcopal Bishops in New York, led by Bishop Mark S. Sisk, recently held a attended a press conference together with Rabbi Joseph Ptasnik, Executive Vice-President of the NY board of Rabbis, to express opposition to plan.

I have not dealt separately with the simultaneous campaign to compel Israel (through UN action) to dismantle her security wall. The two campaigns (dis and div) are different faces of the same project - which is to expose Israel to enemies whose weapons of choice, including recruitment of children as suicide-bombers, are exempted from criticism by the WCC and the many NGOs because they are considered the desperate feeble instruments of the disadvantaged. It is important, however, to recognize the manipulation involved in these two inter-locking campaigns.

Introduction of these resolutions is always preceded by the claim that the attention of these unbiased and non-political theologians has been drawn to these far-off issues by the workings of conscience. The denominational leaders who present themselves at their conventions as spokesmen for the Palestinian people inevitably have just returned from an all-expense-paid tour of the Palestinian churches - a tour which never includes briefing by Israeli political or military sources or (God forbid!) friendly visits to the pro-Zionist Christian organizations active in Jerusalem. The presenters at the conventions always speak of the sudden clarification of the moral issue which came upon them in the course of these intensive five-or-ten day tours to the front. (Doesn’t anyone remember the tours of the Vietnamese front by politicians in the 1960s?)

As soon as the opening speeches are made and the documents are introduced for discussion, a highly-effective cabal of despisers of Israel is already in place at the microphones as questions are now called from the floor. When a historian of the Twentieth Century reads the transcripts of the discussion taking place at these denominational conventions, he is reminded of the days of the Popular Front (the1930s), of those many emotion-charged conventions of the self-declared Friends of Peace where well-rehearsed single-issue zealots -- a small rudder directing a huge seagoing vessel --carried an agreed strategy to the floor while the rest of the delegates floated about asking each other what the issues were.

The full-time fomenters of this anti-Israel campaign are mainly associated with certain of the NGOs whose leadership is drawn in large part from Christian Arabs. Funding for these many NGOs comes from church groups in Europe and North America. Spearheading these efforts is the organization called Sabeel Liberation Theology Centre, Jerusalem, whose full-time director is the Rev. Naim Ateek, once Canon of St George’s Anglican Cathedral in Jerusalem. Canon Ateek travels constantly. When I was researching my books and living in Jerusalem I tried repeatedly to secure interviews with him, but he has always either too busy or out-of-town -- in Cyprus, in Europe, in North America. Needless to say, costs of Canon Ateek’s heroic non-stop travels do not come out of Palestinian coffers but out of budgets of WCC and denominations who provide the settings for his anti-Israel conferences.

No pro-Israel speaker gets anywhere near the platform at a Friends of Sabeel Conference. I have proffered my credentials as a published academic scholar on the History of Zionism and of Christian attitudes towards Israel and have either been ignored, without the courtesy of acknowledgement, or given the stick-in- the-eye that the program is already filled, but thanks so much for your interest. I have undergone this humiliation locally, when the Anglican Church of Canada has sponsored its Friends of Sabeel meetings here in my home city of Ottawa.

Part of the problem is that nobody in the hierarchy of the denominations ever reads a book. The busy, always-traveling, always-at-meetings, always-talking leaders of the denominations do not seem to grasp the concept of a book as an extended argument, with sources and facts and ideas. For these technocrats, everything comes from brochures and goes directly into binders. In this company, pamphleteering is the beginning and the end of everything, scholarship counts for nothing.

Because they are not interested in books of history, they are not exposed to the complexities. Their repertoire comes from headlines, one-liners and slogans.