Grim Coptic Realities

The WCC and its local members whine about the alleged tribulations of the Middle East's only growing Christian population--here in Israel.

Have a look at the testimony of a Coptic Christian regarding the horrendous persecution of Egypt's Coptic minority. Church-burnings, torture, kidnap, and rape are often the fate of this beleaguered native minority. Christians pre-dated Muslims in Egypt by nearly a thousand years, and now are fleeing small towns to live as zabaleen in Cairo's garbage dump district. The smell is bad, but this ghetto is safer for Christians as Muslim persecution grows.

The situation  has only worsened since the downfall of the Mubarak regime.

The video is here, and transcript excerpts are available here.

Christian Hypocrisy in Two Acts

This from Elwood McQuaid via the excellent Tundra Tabloids blog:

"Lutherans from the United States, Catholics and Protestants from Bethlehem and Nazareth, Orthodox Christians from Greece and Russia, lecturers from Lebanon, and Copts from Egypt gathered at a conference recently to declare the Jewish state 'a sin' and occupying power that dehumanizes Palestinians; they called for resistance (jihad) as “a Christian duty."

But wait! Don't these Christian "humanitarians" look suspiciously like this next group? Have a look at this nice ecumenical posting on the AJC website:

"In Jerusalem and the Galilee the AJC leaders from across the United States met with the leading patriarchs, bishops and clergy of the various Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant communities that minister to the approximately 200,000 Christians living in Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The group met with the leadership of the Latin and Greek Orthodox Patriarchates; the Melkhite, Lutheran and Anglican churches; as well as with the Papal Nuncio to Israel and Apostolic Delegate in the Holy Land." 

Remember the Syrian-based Melkites? Their former bishop of Caesaria, Hilarion Capucci, was arrested in 1974 for smuggling arms to the Palestinians, and last year he was a passenger on the Gaza Flotilla's Mavi Marmara. Regarding the arms-smuggling conviction, the Melkite Church condemned his arrest, comparing Capucci's activities to those of anti-Nazi resistance fighters.Sounds like malicious Israel-bashing to me...

But, in a startling display of naivete, an AJC official states:

"AJC’s interreligious activity brings us into regular contact with American Christian friends of Israel genuinely concerned about the situation of their co-religionists in the Holy Land, Rabbi Noam Marans, AJC’s director of Interreligious and Intergroup Relations [stated]...'The region’s Christians are symbolically important to Christians everywhere.  As Jews, it is both a strategic interest and a moral imperative that motivates us to build and maintain good relations with Israel’s diverse and vibrant Christian communities.'”

Marans has succesfully conflated the Christian Zionist real friends of Israel, with those WCC affiliates who regularly engage in demonization against both Israel and Christian Zionists. You also can't help but notice that the AJC had no salient quotes to print from the Christian group.

This is yet another case similar to that of the Israeli Rabbinate's totally meaningless 2006 Joint Declaration signed with the Church of England. Why are these groups so in love with interfaith rhetoric, while studiously ignoring the inflammatory statements made by Christian anti-Semites? Could it have something to do with the professional interfaith diplomat, Rabbi David Rosen, who has positions with both AJC and the Rabbinate?

UK Methodist 2011 Conference--Better, But...



Southport Synagogue:
Methodist delegates attended Model Seder



Methodist Preacher gives a very good overview of this year's UK Methodist Conference conference and the very well-attended "fringe event" which was held at a local synagogue. Moderates worked hard with the UK Jewish community to mend fences.

The radicals who shoved the nearly the whole Sabeel agenda into Methodist legitimacy last year were marginalized this year, but the pro-suicide bombing speaker still spoke at another fringe event. Furthermore, the anti-Israel, Palestinian-crucifying accusations still stand on record.

Read more at this link.

Interfaith Sudoku

Just a few meanderings on the Rabbinate and the Church of England topic…

I noticed that Rabbi David Rosen seems to have been hard at work in the Interfaith Business, and yet not serving his clients’ best interests, the clients being the Israeli Rabbinate, where he serves as a consultant.

I also noticed, as I wrote in the previous post on this topic, that Rosen is an International Committee Advisor at the Parliament of World's Religions as is Archbishop Desmond Tutu, one of the icons of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. Tutu falsely claims that Israel is an apartheid state, and backs up the false assertions in the 2009 Kairos Palestine Document which was promulgated by anti-Israel Anglican canon Naim Ateek and other similarly hostile Palestinian Christian clerics.

So, if we look at this as we would a Sudoku puzzle, and try to figure out what game Rosen is playing, we can find pairs of options as to how the facts fit.  Either the committee Rosen sits on is merely window-dressing, with few or no actual meetings, or Rosen does have contact with Tutu. If Rosen has contact with the Anglican bishop but has absolutely no influence to persuade Tutu of the fact—obvious to almost anyone who has been to Israel—that there is no apartheid here, then is a poor advocate.

One-staters like Ateek and his Sabeel Institute funders and far-left sympathizers do claim there is apartheid. Why? Because they want there to be one state with millions of returned “refugees” inside pre-1967 borders, and no Jews allowed in the West Bank and the Old City of Jerusalem. So, from a one-state perspective, and disregarding Arab Israeli citizens with full democratic rights, there is one law for Israelis, and others for Palestinians ruled by the Palestinian Authority, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Hamas. In this upside-down view, letting the non-democratic PA run everything and throwing out all the Jews over the Green Line for a start (ethnic cleansing) would constitute non-apartheid. Get it?

This opens another option—if Rosen isn’t a poor advocate, then maybe he is an advocate of the same policies held by Israel’s delegitimizers.  In which case, he has no business doing business with Israeli government clients.

Actual Humanitarian Aid

Elder of Zion has this video showing how needy Palestinian children receive life-saving free heart surgery in Israel...and a trip to the zoo!

The Rabbinate’s Exceedingly Strange Bedfellows

Good to be back after a hiatus caused by lifting a cute & small, but surprisingly heavy little niece...

Why is the Israeli Rabbinate “fig leafing” for the Church of England? By “fig leafing” I mean serving as a cover for a fair amount of nasty business which appertains to the Church as a whole, as well as members of its clergy.  In 2006 the Chief Rabbis, Yonah Metzger and Shlomo Amar signed what was trumpeted as a historic agreement between Christians and Jews.

Along with a slew of kumbaya proclamations about the importance of dialogue and mutual respect, two actually salient points were raised. The first issue, raised in item 7 of the Joint Declaration, reads, “Neither evangelism nor conversion has a place amongst the purposes of the dialogue and we emphasise the importance of respect for each other’s faith and of rejecting actions intended to undermine the integrity of the other.” If the Rabbinate was led to believe that this constituted a renunciation of missionary activities, they were deceived. This statement in no way obligates the Church to desist from their ongoing attempts to recruit Jews to Christianity.

In fact, the Church of England runs an entire subgroup called the “Church’s Ministry Among Jewish People” (CMJ), which has been around since 1809. This group is active in six countries, including Israel, where it runs and cultivates “Jews for Jesus” congregations and activities throughout Israel. Another Church of England missionary group, the Church Mission Society, also operates in Israel and runs tours of the based in Bethlehem and Nazareth. These tours allow participants to meet with Palestinian Christian and Muslims, while meeting with Israelis holding anti-Israeli viewpoints as well as “Messianic Jews”.

It is important to note here is that neither of the Chief Rabbis is fluent in English, and it is highly unlikely that the Talmudically-oriented staff at the Rabbinate spent time poring over Church internet sites to find out exactly to whom they were talking. The facilitator of this historic meeting of clerical minds, was Rabbi David Rosen, who was described recently by a Rabbinate staffer as “masterful” in his dealings with the Christians. However, on this point, if the Rabbis demanded a statement decrying missionary work, score one for the Church, zero for the Rabbinate.

The second key issue, already hinted at is the anti-Israel slant of Church positions, as well as highly visible clergy and affiliated organizations. The Church of England has stated that it is in basic agreement with the Kairos Palestine Document which compares Israeli policy to apartheid. The Church of England states that, “the cause of the crisis rests with the Israeli’s illegal occupation of Palestinian land”. Furthermore, the Church itself has already acted in accordance with groups like the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in divesting its holdings in Caterpillar Corporation, as Caterpillar sells machinery to the IDF.

Christian Aid UK is a development agency linked to the World Council of Churches (WCC), a group which has admitted its anti-Israel bias. It is also the preferred charity for members of the WCC, including the Church of England. The board of Christian Aid UK is chaired by Anne Owers, who has strong ties with the Church of England, and three Church of England clerics also sit on the board. NGO Monitor points out that: “Christian Aid engages in a highly politicized approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Its reports disproportionately focus on alleged Israeli "violations" and dismiss the impact of Palestinian terrorism.”

But Christian Aid does more than whitewash terrorism—NGO monitor also notes that: “Many of its partners are among the most radical NGOs involved in the conflict, including Sabeel, ICAHD, and the Alternative Information Center. These NGOs, and other Christian Aid partners, attempt to isolate Israel internationally through boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS).”

The Church also has highly visible clergy such as the Revd George Pitcher. Pitcher was hired as Press Secretary to the Archbishop of Canterbury less than a year after he expressed in print his general “disgust” with Israel and for “shooting [Gaza's] children in the back of the head” as if this were an actual policy, instead of a patent blood libel. But Pitcher is not alone in his anti-Israel ranting. Revd. Garth Hewitt, who styles himself as a guitar-playing peace lover, rages against Israel in a similar but much more heated manner. Hewitt is a Guild Vicar in London, and an honorary canon at St. George’s Cathedral in Jerusalem, and runs an anti-Israel group, the Amos Trust. The Church does not condemn Hewitt either.

None of this squares with the text of item 12 in the Joint Declaration, in which the Church states they: “condemn without reserve those who deny a place for Israel and especially those who engage in the evil work of seeking to bring about its destruction.”

Interestingly, a recent Christian Aid propaganda flyer for the “World Week for Peace in Palestine and Israel”, lists among its “Ecumenical and International links with useful worship and campaigning resources”, not only the organizations cited here, but also the organization founded by the “masterful” Rabbi David Rosen, Rabbis for Human Rights.

 A document put out by the UK Methodists remarks on Israel’s right to exist vis-à-vis the Palestinians, “In connection with attitudes to the 'land' of Israel, some Jews are also aware that holy texts can be abused. ‘We have a battle for our holy texts' declared Rabbi David Rosen, of Rabbis for Human Rights in Jerusalem, at a session on theologies of the ‘Land' at the Parliament of World's Religions in Barcelona.”

In the same text, a member of the interfaith commission from the Church of England which meets with the Rabbinate, the Archdeacon Michael Ipgrave, complains that Yad Vashem, as a national institution is creating a victim ideology for “Oriental” Jews, whom he wrongly claims were unaffected by the Holocaust. Note that Rosen is an International Committee Advisor at the ecumenical Parliament as is Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a man of much stature, and who falsely claims that Israel is an apartheid state.

While the Joint Declaration is certainly another fine feather in Rosen’s ecumenical cap, it is clear that his collegial connections not only fail to support Israel, but they include Israel’s vituperative detractors and delegitimizers. It is time to admit that this was a bust, and stop the taxpayer-funded junkets and hours spent at meetings here and in England. There is no reason for our Israeli Rabbinate to serve as the fig leaf for the Church of England's proselytizing and hateful activities.

By Chanah Shapira 

Meth Myths, and Musings on Occupied German Territories

Malcolm Lowe at Hudson New York has a very tidy review of last year's UK Methodist Conference and some lively speculation about whether EAPPI could be translated into a Occupied German Territories parallel model. Suggested uniform for these activists: brown shirts und lederhosen...H/T to Joe Lauer.

In 2010, the Methodist Church in Britain produced a report entitled "Justice for Palestine and Israel". The report was adopted as official Methodist policy. Consequently, British Methodists are now called upon to boycott certain Israeli products and support the pro-Palestinian initiatives of the World Council of Churches and Christian Aid.
We have looked at this report, which relies heavily upon a purported history of Palestine in the twentieth century, supported by a bibliography that makes no pretense to impartiality. Anyone who has any genuine acquaintance of that history will be amazed at the continual misrepresentations. In particular, the report repeatedly uses statistics that will mislead an unknowing reader. The report is not the first example of this genre of semi-fact, but perhaps it is the greatest masterpiece to date.
Some time ago, we reviewed a miniature product of the genre in our exposé of the Myth of Palestinian Christianity. To do the same for the Methodist report would require a substantial monograph, not a mere article. Moreover, the task would be a waste of time, since such a report can hardly have come from people who might be prepared to change their minds.
But if the British Methodists ever show interest in salvaging their reputation, they should engage a respectable historian (say Benny Morris) to review the report and list its falsities. Moreover, they should pay that historian handsomely for the mental torture involved. Cheaper and more befitting a Christian institution would be to throw it officially into the waste-paper basket. If that sounds exaggerated, consider just a sample of the report's statements.
Of the Arab revolt (1936-1939), the report says that it "was put down with brutal ferocity by British forces during which 5000 Palestinians were killed and 10,000 wounded". Not mentioned is that up to half of the fatalities were Arabs killed by other Arabs on various pretexts. This includes the fighting between the Husseini and Nashashibi clans, in which the Nashashibi leadership was largely wiped out. Jewish casualties are not mentioned at all.
Similar omissions occur where the report mentions the first Palestinian intifada. It is described in this sentence: "This Intifada, which lasted from 1987 to 1991, was mainly associated with stone throwing and popular unrest within the Occupied territories, together with a corresponding firm response by Israeli forces."
Not mentioned is that as many Arabs were killed by other Arabs as by Israelis, on various accusations of being collaborators and prostitutes, etc. The PLO and Hamas also ordered the resignation of the entire local Jordanian-created police, which Israel had left in place since 1967. As a result, crime multiplied without control and various Palestinian organizations could rob the population in the name of resistance. Those organizations also ordered endless strikes that deprived the middle classes of income. A lot more happened than mere stone throwing.

Read more here.

UK Methodists: What Anti-Semitism?

Here is my full op-ed on the pathetic denials of anti-Semitism and anti-Israel bias by the Methodist Church, which was carried by Israel National News:

The Jewish blogosphere has been full of condemnation of what the UK Methodist Church termeda “background document” on Israel and Palestinians. In it Dr. Elizabeth Harris claims that Israel uses Yad Vashem as a propaganda tool to indoctrinate young Israelis.

Ironically, Harris’s article on the official website, “Jewish and Muslim Perspectives on the Land of Israel-Palestine”, was written while she was Inter Faith Coordinator. She opposes the alleged creation of an “Ethos of Victimhood” also among “Oriental” Jews she saw there—whose families, the author claims, were unaffected by theHolocaust. This was the worst section of an article that was full of bias and misrepresentations.

Yet, when exposed, these Methodists functionaries simply whitewashed their statements without admitting they had promoted offensive lies.

In March I wrote to the current Inter Faith Coordinator (Joy Barrow) and Dr. Harris with documentary proof that Nazis persecuted and murdered non-Ashkenazi Jews in Greece, North Africa, and Iraq (during the brutal June 1941 Farhud pogrom in Baghdad). I respectfully requested that they correct or retract their document.

Neither of these things happened. Harris wrote back to me, saying she didn’t mean that non- Ashkenazim weren’t “welcome” at Yad Vashem. On re-reading the article, the racist assumptions jumped out—one, that she and her quoted colleague Michael Ipgrave could tell who was and who wasn’t “Oriental”, and two, that Jews are racially divided and do not concern themselves with each other’s problems. Only someone wholly unfamiliar with Jews and Israeli society could say this.

At this point, I sent the article to Rabbi Abraham Cooper at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, along with other anti-Israel material issued by the church. Rabbi Cooper published the story and condemnation of the article spread through the blogosphere.

Suddenly, once the article was exposed, Harris wrote and claimed that she didn’t even know the article was still on the website, and that it would be removed as part of routine removal of material which was no longer current. But within a day—once it was a public embarrassment—the article link was killed. Harris also claimed that I misunderstood her “grammatically”, and that when she referred to Orientals, she meant “some” and not “all”.

In her email the current Inter Faith Coordinator, Joy Barrow claimed that the document was never official, and was only a set of personal “reflections”. In fact the article was linked on the UK Methodist webpage for “Israel-Palestine” as a complementary resource, and it also appeared in a 2007 position paper in the reference appendices; it is still available there.

These replies constitute a total whitewash of a clearly biased article. The article absolutely reflects the position of the Methodist Church elites who promote a hard-core pro-Palestinian agenda—although many of the rank-and-file are pro-Israel.

To put the official anti-Israel bias in context, representationsmade by Harris in her article are remarkably similar to official positions of the Church documented in their current Conference Report.

In June of 2010 the UK Methodist Church Conference formally adopted a wide-ranging and highly biased policy report titled “Justice for Palestine and Israel”.  UK media maven Tom Gross commented, “Here was a group of almost stereotypically ordinary, middle-class, English Christians calmly reciting every hackneyed anti-Israeli calumny in the book.”

A committee of Methodist leaders drafted the report which, among other things, called for a boycott of Israeli goods, and adoption of Sabeel’s Kairos Palestine Document. KPD is not only a theological rejection of the Biblical linkage of the Jewish people with the land of Israel, but a rejection of the “Old Testament” for political purposes. KPD wholly resurrects the old anti-Semitic Christ-killing charge but with a change. As Sabeel’s founder Naim Ateek said, “Jesus is on the cross again with thousands of crucified Palestinians around Him…The Israeli government crucifixion system is operating daily”.

The conference ultimately adopted a settlement goods boycott only, but wholly accepted the committee’s anti-Israel, anti-Semitic endorsement of KPD. The Report includes this quote from an activist, “When I lived in Bethlehem I understood what I had always known. Jesus was born, lived and died under Occupation and this is what it is like”. .In light of this highly biased religio-political orientation, it is clear that Harris is entirely consistent when she engages in Holocaust trivialization and claims that Holocaust education for young Israelis is an obstacle to peace. “Peace groups have to work against this backdrop”, she states in the article.

When Harris claims in the introduction to her article that “Jews who seek justice for all - Jews and Palestinians” will reject Biblical history after Noah, she is remarkably consistent with the adopted Methodist Conference Report—after all, she was on the committee. Despite claims of the Methodist elites that the article was “unofficial”, it’s pretty hard to see how it differs much from the anti-Semitic, pro-Palestinian apologist policies it openly endorses and funds.

Why Liberalism Needs Watching

For many people, liberalism is a positive ideology, which only means to fight injustice and strive for equality. However, for those who watch current events, it's no secret that the liberal left is also the pro-Palestinian left. But it's a mystery as to why these groups who are also pro-feminist and pro-homosexual would support the anti-Israel repressive Hamas regime in Gaza.

For those who prefer not to be doomed to repetition of history, the following JCPA video examines the changing allegiance of those who supported Dreyfus, a Jew, when he was falsely accused of treason against France in 1894. In a lesson which parallels liberals and conservatives today, Dr. Simcha Epstein details the how those "Dreyfusard" liberals who were still alive and politically active in the 1930s tended overwhelmingly to support and join the Nazi-allied Vichy regime.

The moral of this tale is that liberals tend to be unwilling to actually fight for their principles, hiding behind pacifism to defend their appeasement mentality.

History of Jerusalem Video

This is a really nice video which gives you 4,000 years of history in just 5 minutes!

Enjoy!

Against Christian Zionism

An excerpt from the UK Methodists' 2003 Guidelines, this was adopted wholesale from a Church of Scotland document:

2.4.2        Christian Zionism

A response to the Replacement position and its arguably horrific consequences, (the Holocaust), is found in various forms of Christian Zionism, which range from the post war acceptance of the Jews having somewhere to go for safety, to the much stronger, affirmation that it is actually the sovereign will of God that his chosen people return to their homeland.  The former would state the principles of the basic right to life enshrined in the scriptures and Christian traditions, whilst the latter would find in the promises of the Torah, the prophetic writings etc., the literal word of God to return his people to the land.  A more fiercely prophetic strain of this view is found in the various Dispensationalist positions developed over the last hundred years or so.  These see the return of the Jews to the land as a harbinger of the last days before the return of the Messiah.  For them this is a major spiritual portent, rather than a political debate about human rights.  The Christian Zionist position can be summarised in three basic tenets:

·         the uniqueness of the  Jewish people and their continuing place in salvation history;

·         the importance of the Jewish Theology of berith and eretz; (ie of Covenant and Land) which inextricably links the Jewish people to the land of Israel;

·         the post-holocaust psyche, and the ongoing significance of Jerusalem.

For many however, this visionary approach has not always been accompanied by a sense of critical realism and the "what" has often been obscured by the "how".  The result has been a tension between a perceived "God given" gift of the land to one people, and the suffering this continues to cause to another, a proportion of whom are Christian.

 Note: here they are claiming that there is no Christian basis for Christian Zionism. They point not to the Bible, but use the Hebrew term which may be alien to Christians, and therefore alienate them from identifying this as a shared scriptural tradition.

2.4.3        Liberation /Universal  Models

Historically, liberal Protestantism has tended to be anti-Zionist and universal in its concept of covenant grace, and it is a late 20th century development of this view which forms the third broad category of mainstream Christian thought.  This third position often stands as a reaction to the previous one, finding an unacceptable face of "chosenness", which means the rights and hopes of another people are trampled upon and the standards of peace and justice enshrined in the scriptures are denied, even by those who call on the name of the God who initiated them in the first place.  This fatal inconsistency in the face of real and ongoing suffering has caused many to question and reject any concept of a particularised divine provision, and leads them to see the need instead to denounce the holocaust and any post-holocaust suffering as equally abhorrent to any concept of a loving God.  Many respond to this by having recourse to a model of Liberation Theology where hope is fused with political and pastoral concerns to form a critique which can be highly politicised and even confrontational.

 This is in fact the current Methodist model, but sources indicate that early Wesleyans were Christian Zionists. Far from being a "broad" stream, left-leaning churches have been losing ground for decades to evangelical churches and secular erosion.

2.4.5 A wider and possibly more eirenic model of Liberation, makes the point that even if God were indeed returning the Jews to the land, they were never meant to live there as oppressors or overlords, but rather as caretakers who reflect and embody the love and grace of the God who called them.  Many of these themes are echoed by a Jewish response to Liberation Theology, which sees the same liberating influence for all humanity in the great events of Israel's history.  The Exodus, the Passover, the teachings of the prophets and the subsequent moral guidance of the rabbis all point to an inclusive humanity which shares in the riches of a spiritual tradition and is not abused by it.

This is an attempt to appear in a middle ground, but as it characterizes Israelis as "oppressors or overlords", it's not much nicer. The remarks on Jewish teachings are a liberal interpretation, and completely fail to convey the ages of longing, expressed in liturgy and text to return to the land of our fathers. The Jewish tradition encompasses a particular people with a universal message of morality for all mankind, but does not mean that we have to give up sovereignty in our homeland.

UK Methodists "Time for Palestine"

This week is "World Week for Palestine Israel", and the UK group has the same cheery little rainbow logo and slogan as the US Methodists: "it's time for palestine"

Here's some of the text:

This annual observance of a week of prayer, education, and advocacy calls participants to seek justice for Palestinians so that both Israelis and Palestinians can finally live in peace. It has been more than 60 years since the partition of Palestine hardened into a permanent nightmare for Palestinians. It is now more than 40 years since the occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza overwhelmed the peaceful vision of one land, two peoples.

Two problems:

1. Notice, that the elites of the UK Meths have hardened into the 1948 formula. We are not just talking about post-1967 lands, we are talking about Israel itself as a problem, or "permanent nightmare".

2. And for some reason there is no terror issue, either.  From the Arabs' slaughter of Jews in 1929 in Hebron to the equally brutal recent murder of the Fogel family this year, and all the bombings and shootings in between, none of it seems to make an impression as big as the suffering of the Palestinians.

Yet the dream of one nation cannot be fulfilled at the expense of another.

Oddly, the confiscation of the Iraqi Jewish community's property was supposed to compensate the Palestinians for the loss of their land. Or at least that was the Iraqi fascists' rationale for the looting. This Jewish community of 120,000, which was robbed and expelled after 2600 years in exile, was far more prosperous than the Arab Palestinians of the time. The Iraqi Jews arrived in Israel just after the establishment of the state, with nearly nothing and spent years in tents. This was just one of the expelled Jewish communities; about 1 million of these Middle East natives lost their homes, yet they do not enter into the "expense equation".

The action week's message is that now:

• It's time for Palestinians and Israelis to share a just peace.
• It's time for freedom from occupation.
• It's time for equal rights.
• It's time for the healing of wounded souls.

Looks as if these Meths are putting the obligation on Israel to compensate 1948 refugees, and give them equal rights in Israel. Palestinian Arabs already have the rights the Palestinian Authority gives them, and Israeli Arabs have the best rights of any Arabs in the Middle East.That means an Arab influx of 3 million Arabs into Israel's pre-1967 borders.

Israelis say NO THANKS!!!

Methodists & Palestinian Sewage Resistance

Yesterday, I commented on the ranting claim of the U.S. Methodist statement on Israel's alleged abuse of Pally water resources. Below are a few excerpts from today's Jerusalem Post. Note that rewarding intransigence encourages intransigence. The more the Methodists continue to cry peace and support the Palestinian leadership/hard left line, the harder it will be to get to any peace arrangement. In effect they are peace blockers, not peace makers!

Refusal of PA officials to cooperate with Israel leaves Palestinians with water shortage, contamination, environmental protection minister says.

The Palestinians still suffer from both a water shortage and contaminated water due to the refusal of Palestinian Authority leaders to cooperate with Israel due to the unrelated political conflict, Environmental Protection Minister Gilad Erdan said at a conference held in Paris on Tuesday.

“The issue of water must be outside the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” Erdan said in his speech. “If the Palestinians will continue insisting to put conditions on things, we will not succeed in achieving cooperation and will not find a solution to the water distress of this whole region’s population.”Erdan said the continued pollution of water sources threatened Israelis and Palestinians alike, and that the Palestinian leadership should stop debating who had the right to which water source and instead begin discussing the urgent and mutual needs for water.Today, Israel supplied the Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip much more water than is mandatory under the Interim Agreement of 1995 (Oslo II), the environment minister added...

“How can I help you deal with Israeli bureaucratic obstacles that delay finding solutions to the water distress, such as even I encounter during ongoing activities, when you look for excuses to refuse meetings?” Erdan asked Attili. “This way, nothing will be resolved."

Remember the Farhud

From Jewish Ideas Daily:

By Aryeh Tepper
Al-Husseini inspects SS troops (Vienna Illustrated, 1944).
The end of 2,500 years of Jewish life in Iraq began during two days in June 1941. For 30 terrifying hours, mobs of marauding Iraqi Arabs, soldiers and civilians alike, killed 137 Jews and injured thousands more, pillaged scores of homes, and destroyed more than 600 Jewish-owned businesses. The event came to be known as the Farhud, a Kurdish term for the murderous breakdown of law and order. Within ten years, almost the entire Jewish community of Iraq was gone.

Palestinian-Iraqi-Nazi Axis 1941 Pogrom

70th Anniversary of the Farhud

Click here for a 4-minute video of this tragedy perpetrated against the Jewish community of Baghdad in 1941:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4820909332676727479#

This is why there are no practically no Jews left in the Middle East, except for in Israel. Jews lived in Babylon since the Destruction of the First Temple by Nebuchadnetzer. Fascist nationalist policies drove 120,000 Jews out of Iraq by 1951.

Wanna talk about refugees? Nearly 1,000,000 Jews fled Islamic countries after 1948.

Palace-tinian

Ah, the squalid hovels of the dispossessed!

Here is a snap of a lovely Palestinian home in the West Bank town of Husan. Who owns it? No one will say, but the smart money says it's someone who is closer to the international aid money trough than the average West-Banker.

Palestinians are prospering, but don't say that to anyone with anti-Israel leanings. It's too shocking! In fact Husan, which is next door to Betar, does quite well for itself. It residents benefit from the booming construction business in Betar, and work construction and other jobs there. Business in Husan is also booming.

UK Methodists Respond with Whitewash of Anti-Israel Slurs

The Jewish blogosphere has been full of condemnation of what the UK Methodist Church termed a “background document” on Israel and Palestine. This article on the official website, “Jewish and Muslim Perspectives on the Land of Israel-Palestine”, was written by Dr. Elizabeth Harris while she was Inter Faith Coordinator. Harris claims that Israel uses Yad Vashem as a propaganda tool to indoctrinate young Israelis. She opposes the alleged creation of an “Ethos of Victimhood” also among “Oriental” Jews she saw there—whose families, the author claims, were unaffected by the Holocaust. This was the worst section of an article that was full of bias and misrepresentations.
Yet, when exposed, these Methodists functionaries simply whitewashed their statements without admitting they had promoted offensive lies.
In March I wrote to the current Inter Faith Coordinator and Dr. Harris with documentary proof that Nazis persecuted and murdered non-Ashkenazi Jews in Greece, North Africa, and Iraq (during the brutal June 1941 Farhud pogrom in Baghdad). I respectfully requested that they correct or retract their document.
Neither of these things happened. Only Harris wrote back to me, saying she didn’t mean that non-Ashkenazim weren’t “welcome” at Yad Vashem—as if it were a tea party. And when I re-read the article, the racist assumptions jumped out at me—one, that she and her quoted colleague Michael Ipgrave could tell who was and who wasn’t “Oriental”, and two, that Jews are racially divided and should not concern themselves with each other’s problems. Only someone wholly unfamiliar with Jews and Israeli society could say this. (Ask any new mother how many people have given her unsolicited advice.) We are one people.
Feeling that I was hitting a brick wall, I sent the article to Rabbi Abraham Cooper at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, along with other anti-Israel material issued by the church. Rabbi Cooper published the story and condemnation of the article spread through the blogosphere.
Suddenly, once the article was exposed, I got mail. Harris claimed that she didn’t even know the article was still on the website, and that it would be removed as part of routine removal of material which was no longer current. But within a day—once it was a public embarrassment—the article link was killed. Harris also claimed that I misunderstood her “grammatically”, and that when she referred to Orientals, she meant “some” and not “all”.
In her email the current Inter Faith Coordinator, Joy Barrow claimed that the document was never official, and was only a set of personal “reflections”.
These replies constitute a total whitewash of a clearly biased article. The article absolutely reflects the position of the Methodist Church elites who promote a hard-core pro-Palestinian agenda—although many of the rank-and-file are pro-Israel. To put the official anti-Israel bias in context, representations made by Harris in her article are remarkably similar to official positions of the Church documented in their current Conference Report.
In June of 2010 the UK Methodist Church Conference formally adopted a wide-ranging and highly biased policy report titled “Justice for Palestine and Israel”. UK media maven Tom Gross commented, “Here was a group of almost stereotypically ordinary, middle-class, English Christians calmly reciting every hackneyed anti-Israeli calumny in the book.”
A committee of Methodist leaders drafted the report which, among other things, called for a boycott of Israeli goods, and adoption of Sabeel’s Kairos Palestine Document. KPD is not only a theological rejection of the Biblical linkage of the Jewish people with the land of Israel, but a rejection of the Old Testament for political purposes. KPD wholly resurrects the old anti-Semitic Christ-killing charge but with a change. As Sabeel’s founder Naim Ateek said,”Jesus is on the cross again with thousands of crucified Palestinians around Him…The Israeli government crucifixion system is operating daily”.
The conference ultimately adopted a settlement goods boycott only, but wholly accepted the committee’s anti Israel, anti-Semitic endorsement of KPD. The Report includes this quote from an activist, “When I lived in Bethlehem I understood what I had always known. Jesus was born, lived and died under Occupation and this is what it is like”. .In light of this highly biased political orientation, it is clear that Harris is entirely consistent when she engages in Holocaust trivialization and claims that Holocaust education for young Israelis is an obstacle to peace. “Peace groups have to work against this backdrop”, she states in the article.

When Harris claims in the introduction to her article that “Jews who seek justice for all - Jews and Palestinians” will reject Biblical history after Noah, she is remarkably consistent with the adopted Methodist Conference Report—after all, she was on the committee. Despite claims of the Methodist elites that the article was “unofficial”, it’s pretty hard to see how it differs much from the anti-Israel, hard-line radical policies it openly endorses and funds.

U.S. Methodists: Divide Jerusalem

The Methodists recently released a statement on Middle East Politics. Here's how they got it wrong:

"The world’s attention has been focused on the dramatic events unfolding around the Middle East in recent weeks. Across North Africa and through to the Persian Gulf, ordinary citizens have been rising up against their illegitimate leaders and demanding political freedoms.
Regimes already have fallen in Tunisia and Egypt. In other capital cities, protests and demonstrations continue. The winds of change are blowing. For millions across the Middle East, the future will be radically different from the past."

IN fact, there are numerous uprisings in process, but the results may be less freedoms, not more. In Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist parties are predicted to win the September elections. In Yemen it looks as if al Qaeda is gaining ground. A foothold in Yemen could spell disaster for the Saudi oil business and further escalation in the price of oil. Anyone' who thinks al Qaeda is adding democratic values is dead wrong.

"Unfortunately, one state’s undemocratic, militaristic rule over millions of civilians suffering under its administration looks likely to continue unchallenged. That state is Israel, and those living under its illegitimate control are the Palestinians of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip."

Actually, the Arabs with proven residency in East Jerusalem had the option to become Israeli citizens, but many opted out of Israeli democracy. West Bank Arabs enjoy an 8-12% annual economic growth rate under Fatah and buckets of foreign aid money. Gaza Arabs voted for the terrorist group Hamas. They are running their own place there. We just don't want them running guns from Iran. Israeli Arabs vote like anyone else. Palestinians in Arab countries have limited rights--which may mean no citizenship, being restricted in terms of professionsm, and having to live in refugee camps built by Arab governments in 1948. That means that they have less rights than so-called "occupation sufferers".

"The United Methodist Church opposes continued military occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, the confiscation of Palestinian land and water resources, the destruction of Palestinian homes, the continued building of illegal Jewish settlements, and any vision of a 'Greater Israel' that includes the occupied territories and the whole of Jerusalem and its surroundings (Resolution 6073)."

Israel is not building new settlements. Israelis in the "disputed territories" would like to expand their communities within the lines of their long-term municipal boundaries. Despite the panicked terms of the Methodist statement, there is more than enough land, and settlements actually take up a very small percentage of available land--1.7%.

Home destruction is a punishment reserved for family homes of terrorists, or when terrorists have used the property as a base for terror.

Again, there is no "occupation in Gaza", only border control and occasional IDF hits on Gaza missile launchers who fire at Israeli civilians. And now that the Egyptian border Rafah crossing is open there is no call to claim they are blockaded. Regarding water, in the south overpumping of water by Arabs near the coast has led to some salinization of the aquifer. In Hebron, Arabs refused a sewage treatment plant (which Israel would have built and paid for) because if would have benefited Jewish residents of nearby Kiryat Arba.

A united Jerusalem is a Jerusalem open to all faiths--when the Jordanians held Jerusalem they destroyed numerous synagogues.

In the US the Methodists are claiming that the Arab Spring is blooming but in Israel, we are still the horrid occupying oppressors—this while Syria keeps shooting more and more demonstrators.

I agree with Glenn Beck: the Arab Spring flowers look more like a handful of weeds, and they sure smell more like dog pee. Meanwhile, the Methodists are still smelling lilac...

Blessings,
Chanah

Essential Reading!

If you want to understand the rancid underpinnings of the secular, liberal culture of Palestinian victimhood and Israel's "oppressor" status, read on. This is one of the best brief analyses you will find. Remember, even when Arabs fire missiles on Israeli towns, it's somehow our fault. 'Cause we live here.

From Jewish Ideas Daily, by Aryeh Tepper

In a post-religious world, where traditional means of finding absolution and redemption no longer hold sway, "the powerful and inextinguishable need of human beings to feel morally justified" looks for other outlets, many of them problematic. One such outlet, writes McClay, is the sanctimonious cult of self-empowerment through "forgiveness" and "non-judgmentalism." Another and related one is the conferral of prestige on certain designated classes of "victims"; by identifying with such victims, modern men and women can therapeutically participate in a kind of "stolen suffering," thereby affirming their own innocence and discharging their moral burden.

But a perverse logic is in motion here, and it plays itself out in corrosive ways. Since there are no victims without victimizers, a corollary of identifying oneself with the victim is the projection of one's guilt onto a "designated oppressor" who "plays the role of the scapegoat." And it is by this logic that, step by inevitable step, the cult of non-judgmentalism and the pursuit of innocence have ended up hand in glove with the tyranny of political correctness, the vicious policing of discourse and the ostracizing of designated villains that are the ugly hallmark of so much of contemporary intellectual and academic life.

Read full post here.

Do you do the UK Methodist Squelch?

Not atypical! Methodist Preacher, who goes head-to-head against his church's leftist establishment has this item below--and if you use the link from the blogroll and scroll down the blog, you'll see his recent post on the non-repudiated Methodist Nazi preacher who turned in Jews in the Channel Islands during WWII:

Another letter the Methodist Recorder refuse to publish

It seems that the Methodist Recorder now refuse to publish anything sympathetic to Israel. Three weeks have passed since I wrote to them about an anti-Semitic "factcard" from an organisation called "Christians Aware". Just for the record, if not for the Recorder, this is what I wrote:
Dear Editor,
I am disappointed that the Recorder published in a prominent position, without question, a “factcard” purporting to represent the situation in the town of Hebron (May 5, 2011).
Just one sentence betrays the casual anti-Semitic bias of the “factcard” : ‘These (the security barriers) separate the Jewish settlers (sic) and the Palestinian residents, hampering freedom of movement for the Palestinians”
It is not rocket science to work out that the security barriers also hamper the freedom of movement of Hebron’s Jews.

Why are the Jews referred to as “settlers” and the Palestinians as “residents”?

There has been a Jewish community in Hebron for at least 800 years. Unfortunately in 1929 Arab militants attacked Jewish homes and 67 Jews were murdered and many women raped. It was the courage other local Arabs which prevented the death toll being higher.

Read more here

UK Methodists: Holocaust is Israel's Propaganda Tool

Judean Eve Responses & Info

Here is one of the critiques of the UK Methodist “background document” on Israel and Palestine. The Point of no return blog combines both the Wiesenthal Center and the EoZ posts as well as adding more relevant material to expose the lies in the article which was posted on the UK Methodist website. Incidentally, while the article link was killed by the Methodists, you will find it linked here and accessible. I will be adding more material on Methodist anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism in further posts, as well as info on the WCC and Sabeel. Please be patient; there is a lot of material.

Oriental Jews ‘did not suffer in Holocaust’-Methodists

The UK Methodist Church has stooped to a new low with this document, whose ignorance is only matched by its malice. Elder of Ziyon has a good post challenging the Methodists' assumption that Sephardi Jews did not suffer in the Holocaust: (with thanks: Amie) "One of its authors chastises Yad Vashem, Jerusalem's Holocaust museum: "'Israel is the only real answer to the Holocaust' is the message ... This perspective is transmitted to young Israelis through visits to Yad Vashem organised by schools and other groups. When I visited the Centre ... I noticed that many visitors were not of European Jewish descent. As Michael Ipgrave, then Secretary of the Churches' Commission for Inter Faith Relations, wrote in his report of the visit: 'The Holocaust has come to serve as a national story embracing also Oriental Jews for whom this was not part of their family history.' (my emphasis - ed) Peace groups in Israel have to work against this backdrop." “Rabbi Abraham Cooper sets the record straight in the Huffpost: "Want peace? Decouple Israel from the Holocaust. Curiously, the Methodists' narrative goes beyond Palestinian chutzpah, whose historic revisionism ignores three millennia of continuous Jewish presence in the Holy Land, and insists that the Allies manufactured the State of Israel to provide a home for survivors of the WWII Holocaust that these Methodists now want Jews to forget.”
Read more here http://jewishrefugees.blogspot.com/2011/05/oriental-jews-did-not-suffer-in-shoah.html

With blessings,
Chanah