Christians roasting on an open fire (but not at St James's, Piccadilly)

Sorry, I really shouldn't try to upstage the sublime Ed West...

For Israelis and Palestinians the quest to find a peaceful settlement in this tiny piece of land, only 1.2 Waleses in size, is a matter of life and death. For foreigners active in the conflict on one side or the other it is an obsession. 

I’ve always found it strange that people in the West are so fixated by the subject, especially now that the rest of the Middle East is filled with daily atrocities and injustices that dwarf anything in the Holy Land. 

In fact one of the few concrete benefits of the 2011 Arab uprisings is that there has been a marked decline in the number of people offering an opinion on Israel/Palestine. I know that 100,000 dead in Syria is a high price to pay for that, but I suppose we should look at the upsides. 

There are still a few, such as those people at St James’s in Piccadilly who, despite Christians in the Middle East suffering one or two more pressing problems, decided to construct a replica wall to protest against Israel. Of course the Israeli barrier is a serious problem for the Christians in Bethlehem, and people in Beit Jala now face losing their homes. But surely there is an issue of perspective this year at least? How would they show their solidarity with Egyptian Christians – by burning down the church?

And I'm a Jew too!

Notwithstanding yesterday's rant on my other blog, I'm not giving up on this one. There's another admirable piece from Ruth Dudley Edwards, who has gone on the radio to make the case against Ireland's Israel-bashing Catholic aid agency, Trocaire. Would that we had someone as feisty and articulate as her on this side of the Irish Sea to take on Christian Aid. Note the generous state funding Trocaire, like Christian Aid, enjoys on the premise that it's dedicated to helping the world's poorest. As ever, leftist axe-grinders are drawn to the scent of other people's cash like flies to, well, you know what. Like Ruth I take the view that this is not what I pay tax for.

And again: either the Irish bishops are simply too punch-drunk to do their job properly and sort this mess out, or they actually approve of what's going on. Either way, scandalous.

Irish Catholic aid agency blurring the distinction between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism?

I haven't blogged very much here since I became a Catholic in 2011, and one of the main reasons was the feeling that Christian Aid had become someone else's problem, since the Catholic Church is not a partner of Christian Aid but has its own aid charity in England and Wales, Cafod.

If Ruth Dudley Edwards is to be believed, however (and I see no reason why she shouldn't be) Christian Aidism is alive and well in the Irish Catholic Church and its aid agency, Trocaire.

I'm not qualified to gauge how typical of Ireland such attitudes are. They do sound like an ugly mix of old and new, Right and Left. On the one hand the ancient strain of (pseudo-)theological Christian anti-Semitism which one would be less surprised to hear echoed by Richard Williamson and his followers. On the other hand, Christians me-tooing with a secular radical Left in which "anti-Zionism" is a badge of identity and extreme expressions of it have long since ceased to trigger unease.

As Dudley Edwards suggests, the demoralisation of the Irish bishops probably contributes to a situation where the idealogues in Trocaire have free rein to steer the organisation in a direction congenial to themselves. My impression is that Cafod is on a tighter rein - at least as far as this issue is concerned. It all underlines the importance of upholding the letter and spirit of Nostra Aetate, and we are very fortunate to have a Pope who is unequivocally committed to doing so.

Farewell Daleep Mukarji, Israel-baiter

In April Dr Daleep Mukarji ended a 12-year stint as Director of Christian Aid. So this is not a bad time to stumble on a Guardian Society interview with Dr Mukarji, published in May 2004 but still distinctly topical.

I started my campaign to challenge Christian Aid's bias against Israel by writing to Dr Mukarji in 2003. I received a courteous and considered response. When I wrote again a couple of years later he was enjoying an extended holiday in India, and the response promised by his PA never materialized. That I could never have expected to get any change out of him becomes clear in the first paragraph of the Guardian piece:-

'The church in Britain may once have been perceived as the Conservative party at prayer but its humanitarian wing offers a world view that embraces cross-cultural action against poverty, criticises Israel and the US, supports peasant occupations of land in Brazil, and lobbies Tony Blair on aid for Africa.'

Well, you see why I wanted to cover it, don't you? I don't think there has ever been much risk of Christian Aid being confused with the Conservative Party at anything, but just to rule out any possible doubt, here is the Guardian's seal of approval: this guy is One Of Us. How do we know this? Because he criticises Israel and the US. Because he criticises the two countries in which four fifths of the world's Jews live. In 2004 this was the way you established your credentials as a good Leftie and it still is in 2010 only more so.

And so it goes on:-

'Reality matches rhetoric, he insists. "Liberation theology has inspired many of us; we want to be part of a movement to change systems and structures, including the use of civil disobedience and protest, though never the use of violence."

'So Brazilian peasants seizing land have Mukarji's backing, while a Christian Aid report said Israeli policies deepened Palestinian poverty. "We must not be in sympathy with anyone who uses violence," he says, "but we do have to look at the root causes, respect people's rights and ask how we can find solutions."'

Need I say that Dr Mukarji apparently felt no need to accuse any other state (apart from the US) of having policies that deepen poverty? Here, too, we have the key equivocation which enables Christian Aid to disclaim sympathy with violence whilst steadfastly declining to explicitly condemn the violence of Hamas. That violence has its "root causes" in the Israeli occupation, therefore the proper response to it is not condemnation of Hamas but condemnation of Israel. Of course this is a game in which the moral parcel is only ever passed in one direction, so that Israel is never to be exonerated by an appeal to "root causes".

Perhaps I am being too hard on Dr Mukarji, though?

'One example of that movement is the UK Interfaith Humanitarian Group, which Mukarji helped set up after 9/11 to bring together Christian, Islamic, Jewish and other faith agencies, as well as Oxfam and Save the Children, to work together on common concerns such as Islamophobia and anti-Semitism.'

Very laudable in principle, but how does it work out in practice? Perhaps that concern with Islamophobia is the reason why Dr Mukarji did not use the interview to criticize any of the 57 member states of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference. Not even Sudan, whose regime was in 2004 still engaged in its 20-year war against the non-Muslim populations of the South of the country, deploying brutality on a scale massively exceeding anything the Palestinians have ever suffered at the hands of Israel.

But it's Israel, not Sudan, that is fair game for "criticism". And I'll say it again: whenever Israel is singled out in this way, anti-Semitism is legitimized. When the singling out is repeated time after time after time, anti-Semitism creeps stealthily back into the mainstream. Enough drops of water will hollow out a stone. Read here an example of how the mood is changing among supposedly intelligent and educated people.

"I don't think this would have happened 10 years ago" writes Eve Garrard of the outburst of "bloody Jews" academic anti-Semitism she encountered. No indeed; and Dr Daleep Mukarji has spent the past decade being part of the problem. Too many of those drops of water have dripped from Christian Aid on his watch. It's not a record that encourages me to regret his departure.


Postscript

On a different tack, it's worth noting the extraordarily deferential tone of the Guardian piece. If the interviewer had any aspirations to be a Humphreys or a Paxo one day, he was keeping them under wraps. Whatever the normal hue of his nose, it was surely browner than Dr Mukarji's by the time he switched the tape recorder off. Guardian Society knows which side of its bread is buttered with advertising revenue.

Here's the executive summary of Mukarji's CV:-

'Mukarji's background mixes both the frontline of human need and leadership roles in development challenges, from working as a doctor with lepers to taking on the Christian Aid job in 1998 and becoming an influential voice in many networks, notably as chair of the Trade Justice Movement. He once described himself as "city-bred, slightly westernised, secular and cosmopolitan".

'Why is he running a multi-million pound global charity from small offices near Waterloo station, London? "I made a personal and professional choice," he answers. "I could have stayed a doctor in India, but I saw that poverty and injustice could not be solved by medical treatment alone; that needed everything from clean water supplies to women's rights. That inspired me. I'm very lucky: I get paid for doing what I enjoy, and I believe in what I'm doing."'

Practically an Albert Schweitzer de nos jours. Here, though, is the same in a little more detail at the end:-

'Career 1971, qualified as doctor; 1972-74, worked with lepers and then ran mission hospital; 1975-76, post-graduate study in London, diploma in tropical public health, and master's in social planning; 1977, returned to India to establish a rural health and community development programme; 1985, appointed general secretary of the Christian Medical Association of India; 1994, became executive secretary for health, community and justice at the World Council of Churches in Geneva; April 1998, became director of Christian Aid, seeking to expand the organisation's influence and to change public perception of the charity's work.'

So two years at most as a frontline medic, followed by some 35 years as a desk wallah! I hasten to add that I who have never entered a leper hospital have no business pointing to the mote in Dr Mukarji's eye. No doubt every one of his career moves has been motivated by a zeal for serving the poor (though it must be said that he was in no danger of joining their number during his time at Christian Aid). But I don't much like newspapers that try to manipulate me. Better just make that "I don't much like newspapers".

Summonsed by Bell: spinning against Israel in the name of Britain's Christians

'For the latest comments on Israel from Christian Aid see:

http://www.christiantoday.com/article/christian.aid.fears.for.ngos.in.israel/25917.htm

'Does Mr Grumpy have anything to say about this?'

- asks commenter David.

Well, David, due to the way the portfolios have been divvied up here I'm afraid you'll have to make do with the Nick Clegg to Grumpy's Cameron. Rest assured, though, that my remarks have been cleared by the big boss.

So, yes, meet William Bell, Christian Aid's "Advocacy Officer for Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory". The man, in other words, who, with the blessing of my church (and forty others large and small), has a full-time job spinning against the Jewish state. David, I hardly know what to say (apart from everything I've been saying here for the past five years).

I'd just like to know what makes William Bell tick. Perhaps he will stumble on this and enlighten me. Does he ever turn on the radio in the morning and think "Gosh, those poor people in Tibet/Burma/Zimbabwe/Darfur... They could really do with a bit of advocacy. I'll have a word with the boss and see if I can talk him into broadening my job description."?


Or does he wake up every morning saying to himself, "What a dream of a job mine is. For if I wasn't able to speak out against the Most Evil State in the World, who else would?"?

And if that's the way it is, if it isn't about Jews, what is it about?

This particular effort from Mr Bell reveals quite a lot about the way he operates. Like any good lobbyist he can take any story and spin it on his clients' favour. Here the starting point is Israel's admission to the OECD. I'd say this accolade for the country's thriving economy was something to celebrate, on the whole. But for Mr Bell the Israeli glass is half empty at the very best. Not a proper democracy, he mutters. Unlike all those proper democracies for which the rest of the Middle East is famed. Again, I'd say it's little short of a miracle that Israel has stayed democratic through 60 years of staving off threats to its existence. No credit given by Mr Bell, though: "civil society [...] under threat [...] repression [...] intimidation [...] undermine human rights defenders [...]". Etc etc.

Does Christian Aid ever condemn Sudan, or any of the world's despotisms, in anything like these forthright terms?

I tried googling "Christian Aid Sudan repression". The first hit was the paid-for Christian Aid Week link. The second was an item on Ethiopia with a passing reference to Christian Aid. The third was a press release from the Disasters Emergency Committee, of which Christian Aid is of course a prominent member. It was issued in 2004. Of criticism of the Sudanese government there is not one word.

A little further down the list came Christian Aid's Sudan page. Still no word of criticism of the government. Maybe it's on the linked "Our work on conflict" page? Oh dear. We learn that they deliver urgent aid in Darfur, however:-

'But our experience has also told us that our response to conflict needs to be even more far-reaching than the delivery of humanitarian assistance, however important that may be.'

That's the lead in to a section headed "Speaking out". So this must be where they've put the hard-hitting criticism of the Sudanese regime, right? Wrong. Six paragraphs: one on Colombia, one general, four on... need I continue?

After this you won't be too surprised to learn that there is no Christian Aid Advocacy Officer for Sudan. And with that, back to William Bell.

What is it that has triggered Mr Bell's doom-laden pronouncements on the state of Israeli democracy? Simply this: there are moves afoot in the Knesset to limit the political activities of NGOs like, well, Christian Aid. Not, be it noted, that any laws have been passed; that it's even being talked about is enough.

NGOs in Israel enjoy freedoms which would be inconceivable under any dictatorship. That, of course, is one major reason why the BBC website tells us more about Israeli human rights abuses, real or otherwise, than those of any of the world's dictatorships (than all of the world's dictatorships put together, is the impression I often get). Every time anyone in B'Tselem blows their nose a BBC stringer is on hand with tape recorder running.

Israel is also remarkably tolerant of international NGOs coming to the country to pursue anti-Israel political agendas. Sometimes somebody is refused admission and headlines are made, but these are exceptions that prove the rule. I've written a lot about the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel, a Christian Aid partner and in effect a training programme for anti-Israel propagandists. Their volunteers may face some hurdles in getting into Israel, but get in they do.

So whilst a retreat from this openness would certainly be cause for concern, it would also be comprehensible. It would be directly related to the way Israel's openness has been abused by NGOs like Christian Aid, the way they take the soft option of giving democratic Israel a hard time whilst mutely bending the knee to tyrants.

Here's a reminder of how much open scrutiny of their human rights Israel's enemies tolerate. Simple but effective: if you're going to do something unpleasant, make sure no journalists are watching. True, you might not be able to suppress the story completely. But there won't be any tear-jerking eyewitness accounts or any of those pictures that speak a thousand words. Obviously it also helps that because you're Hamas you can rely on the Beeb to insert a sideswipe at Israel by way of "balance".

So where was Christian Aid when Hamas were bulldozing poor people's shacks?

From just across the border comes another recent story, taking us back to that booming economy that's won Israel a seat at the OECD. A reminder of who's benefitting and who isn't - and why.

It's only a privileged minority of the human race that can afford to turn up its noses at a thousand dollars a month for picking coriander, even if it comes at the slight risk of falling victim to a rocket attack. It's good money in Thailand and it's good money in Gaza. It's certainly more than enough to ensure you won't need to look to Christian Aid to provide your next meal.

And it's money that used to flow into the Gazan economy. Until?

'But until the start of the second intifada, or Palestinian uprising, in 2000 when Israel tightened the border, thousands of Gazans used to travel daily through Erez to work on Israeli farms.'

Those smooth euphemisms for the campaign of mass murder directed at Israel's civilian population. Of course Israel turned off the flow of potential suicide bombers. What country on earth would not have done so? And now the Thais are doing the jobs Israelis won't do while Gaza has 40% unemployment. It's called shooting yourself in the foot - or it is if you think that the foot and the finger on the trigger have the same owner. If, that is, you count Hamas as the legitimate democratic representatives of the people of Gaza. What do you say, Mr Bell?

Solidarity against intimidation

Stephen Sizer, a Surrey vicar with rather more than a sideline in "anti-Zionism", has not yet featured here. No time like the present to introduce him. Seismic Shock, a Christian blogger who keeps tabs on his activities, has recently had a visit from the police. Another Christian blogger has been personally warned that she may experience similar treatment - rather bizarrely since she is based in Australia.

Mr Sizer affects hypersensitivity to accusations of anti-Semitism. If that reflects his true feelings, he isn't doing himself any favours by the company he keeps. If a book of mine was available as a free download at a Holocaust deniers' website I'd want to do something about it.

I'm pleased to see that Mr Sizer's actions have been widely publicized. It can't be widely enough. In solidarity against intimidation, here is a link to Seismic Shock's post recounting his experience, and here is a link to the post at Vee's Living Journey blog to which Mr Sizer contributed his threatening comment.

And I feel a letter to the Bishop of Guildford coming on.

Update: I've removed the link to the Holocaust denial website as I suspect there is a risk of virus infection. The address, strictly at your own risk, is: http://www.vho.org/aaargh/fran/livres2/SIZERchriszion.pdf

Christian Israel-bashers: a seasonal round-up

At Harry's Place Adam Holland relays a seasonal Israel-demonizing epistle from Trots for Jesus, alias the United Churches of Christ and one or two more of the usual suspects from the left end of the American Protestant spectrum. Predictably enough, it equates Israel with imperial Rome and the Palestinians with Rome's Jewish subjects and specifically with Jesus. The rhetoric comes straight from Canon Naim Ateek and Sabeel. And as Adam points out:-

'To put this comparison in perspective, remember that the Roman forces in Judea are said to have massacred tens (if not hundreds) of thousands including woman and children, literally festooning roads with their crucified victims. The Roman war against the Jews included the Romans burning Jerusalem, including the temple, to the ground.

'And of course, there was that whole Christ-killing thing… The letter goes on to subtly invoke that old standby, Jewish deicide:

"What the Palestinian community faces, Jesus knew when he walked these stony hills."'

One of the signatories links to a page on the site of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, on which we find a set of four maps purporting to show the changes in the division of land between Jews and Palestinians from 1946 up to the present. In fact they're a wicked propagandist travesty, and again Adam Holland does a great job of demonstrating this. One point he could have added is the gross dishonesty of portraying the whole of Israel as "Jewish land". In reality, of course, it's the home of a million Arabs.

This is not the first time I've seen those maps. They can be found, illustrating an equally mendacious narrative of the "suffering in Palestine", on the website of Friends of Sabeel UK, the charity (I'm inclined to put that in quotes) about whose partnership with Christian Aid I posted recently.

Here they're credited, below the extremely revealing rollcall of FoSUK Patrons, as "courtesy of Tim Biles from his book A Puppy Dies". The title tells you all you need to know, doesn't it? Now it would be a pretty amazing coincidence if this were not one and the same person as the Revd. Canon Timothy Biles, who, I find, acts as Consultant and newsletter editor to a charity called the Jerusalem and the Middle East Church Association. If he is indeed the originator of those maps they are no aberration. He's still at it.

Here is an extract from a book review by Mr Biles in the Advent 2009 issue:-

'But storm clouds gathered, the events of 1948 are described in graphic detail, the incursion of
Zionist forces into Haifa and northern Palestine, the forced evacuation of the indigenous population to southern Lebanon and the refugee camp of Shatila [...]'

The detail may be graphic but it is evidently extremely one-sided, at least in Mr Biles's reading of it. Where are the incursions of the Arab armies seeking to destroy Israel at birth, and fought off only at the cost of 6000 Jewish lives?

And again:-

'The author shows how the lives and fates of Palestinian Christians and Muslims are intertwined, making it clear that it is the Israeli occupation, not Islam, that threatens Christians in the land that was Palestine.'

Curious, then, that while Palestinian Christians become an endangered species the Muslim population, equally subject to occupation, is growing by leaps and bounds. But it seems that for Mr Biles and his friends nobody other than the Israelis is ever threatening. An article in the 2008 issue quotes another priest and/or his wife as saying:-

'What is ultimately striking about Gaza is the sheer disproportionality of it all – the collective punishment inflicted on 1.5 million people is against every measure of international and humanitarian law…'

I certainly understand why people returning from Gaza in the aftermath of the invasion would say this. But we get no mention of what it is that the "collective punishment" is disproportionate to, no suggestion that lobbing missiles at civilian populations is itself a form of collective punishment "against every measure of international and humanitarian law". Still less any suggestion that Hamas, the popularly elected rulers of Gaza, bear any responsibility for thus picking a fight with a vastly more powerful enemy. As so often the H-word doesn't appear at all.

Bias is one thing, lies are another. Above this article is a heading containing the claim that "Gaza is the most densely populated place on earth". This was untrue when George Galloway said it three or four years ago (which hasn't prevented him from repeating it last year) and it's still untrue, as a minute's googling will confirm. Gaza's population density (4118 per sq km - panel on the right here) is exceeded by Macau, Monaco, Singapore, Hong Kong and Gibraltar (list here). Oh, and also (comfortably) by Tel Aviv (7604 per sq km).

It's true that Gaza may move further up the league table if it continues to have one of the highest rates of population growth on earth. It's not immediately obvious to me how this is the Israelis' fault (indeed they made a temporary dent in the population by removing 8000 settlers in 2005) but I expect Mr Biles could soon put me right.

So is this Canon of the Church of England a liar or a dupe? The latter, I very much hope, but if so, I wish he'd do a bit less politicking and a bit more priesting. If the former, it's a disgrace that he's a dignitary of my Church.

It's Propagandatide again!

If any readers in London can get to St Paul's in Covent Garden by 6:45 tonight and protest against the use of a church for this kind of nonsense, it will be an evening well spent (I can't, unfortunately).

J'accuse encore: how Christian Aid demonizes the Jewish state

The United Reformed Church is a significant Christian Aid donor. Through its "Commitment for Life" programme it raised over £400,000 for CA last year. It divides its donations into four equal parts, to be spent respectively in Bangladesh, Jamaica, Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Zimbabwe. This arrangement already tells us something about the way propaganda shapes the perceptions of the most well-meaning. It results in Palestinians getting about five times more per head than Zimbabweans, and getting on for fifty times more than Bangladeshis - and this despite the fact that Palestinians are on average significantly less poor than either Zimbabweans or Bangladeshis. OK, the Jamaicans do best of all, and I admit I have no theory to explain how the URC worked that one out, unless it simply reflects where they like to spend their holidays.

Christian Aid have produced briefings for the URC on the countries which its donations benefit. The one for Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories is here, and it starts like this:-

'The past year has been dominated by the conflict in Gaza and its aftermath. On 27 December 2008 Israel launched an aerial bombardment of the Gaza Strip, followed by a ground invasion a week later. The violence continued for 22 days, until a temporary ceasefire was put in place on 18 January. Christian Aid’s partners wasted no time in responding to the crisis, with the provision of medical relief, food distribution and counseling for children. But Israel’s continuing blockade of Gaza’s borders – which even before the conflict was severely exacerbating the poverty and suffering of the people of Gaza - continues to hamper the humanitarian response.'

Needless to say, it was entirely appropriate that Christian Aid should respond to the humanitarian emergency created by the fighting in Gaza. But humanitarian is never just humanitarian where Christian Aid's involvement in the Middle East is concerned - as the passage above demonstrates perfectly.

In this version of events there was no conflict, no violence until an Israeli bombardment began on 27 December. The rockets that fell in their hundreds in and around Sderot simply aren't part of the picture; apparently they fall outside Christian Aid's working definitions of 'conflict' and 'violence'. So, once the rockets have been excluded, Israel's actions in first blockading, then bombarding and invading Gaza become totally unprovoked, gratuitous acts of cruelty.

Argue that an invasion was the wrong response to the rockets and you potentially have my sympathy. Ditto if you argue that it took an unnecessary toll of civilian life. But if you present the invasion as unprovoked you've crossed the line in the sand. On the right side of the line what happens is the proper holding to account of all the parties in a long and complex conflict in which nobody has a monopoly of right. On the wrong side is the demonization of that state and the promotion of prejudice and hatred towards the people whose state it is. That there are a lot of people on the wrong side these days is no excuse for Christian Aid to be among them.

When you're looking from the wrong side of the line, you can see the children of Gaza need 'psycho-social support', but it doesn't occur to you to wonder what it's like to be a child in Sderot. You feel a need to support people who 'provide a supply of credible and up-to-date information to counter biased or misleading accounts in the Israeli media' - no need to worry about Gaza's media, which thanks to their Hamas minders always tell the truth, don't they?

And whilst you will be happy to associate Zimbabwe with images like this...

...("A man surveying his crops with pride" from this leaflet) your preferred imagery for Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories will be like this...

...accompanied by text like this:-

'It is 6am and Rasheed Mohammed’s hands grip the metal bars at the main checkpoint between Bethlehem and Jerusalem. Like the 2,000 other Palestinian workers coming through this morning, his short commute to work is now far longer and far more difficult. It takes him through these bars; past Israeli soldiers with rifles; through two ID checks; and a metal detector.'

(from this leaflet)

You will graciously concede to Israel 'the right and the duty to protect her citizens', but will have nothing to say about the cost of her pre-barrier inability to do so.

From the wrong side of the line in the sand you will not see any soldiers with rifles in Zimbabwe, and only your passing reference to 'bad governance' will hint at the realities of a country terrorized and reduced to penury by a despot. So you will have no thought of sending volunteers dressed in high-visibility jackets to monitor the country's human rights record. Save that for the evil Israelis.

I sometimes wonder whether 'Christian Hate?' was an overly provocative title for my blog. But not when I see material like this. And, yes, even the gentle souls of the United Reformed Church can be led to hate in the end, if they're fed enough lies. The evidence is for that proposition is in the long, bloody history of Christian anti-Semitism. If you don't believe me, it's time to do some reading.

Christian Aid and Israel: some hard facts for Liberal Jews (and concerned Christians)

This post is cross-posted at Harry's Place


Who said that?

'[T]he pro-Israeli lobby has got its grips on the western world, its financial grips. I think they've probably got a grip on our party.'

Who said that? Answer: a former Trustee 0f Christian Aid, and current Patron of a Christian Aid partner charity.

'International law accepts that people living under illegal military occupation are entitled to fight against the occupiers with whatever means they have at their disposal. If the world does not like, for example, “terrorist suicide bombing” in Palestine (a weapon neither unique to the Palestinians nor invented by them), then, as one Palestinian exile said at a conference in December 2003, “Give us F-16s, Apache helicopters, missiles tanks and heavy weapons, and we’ll have a fair fight”.'

Who used these words to justify the deliberate killing of civilians? Answer: another Patron of the same Christian Aid partner charity.

Also on the roll of Patrons are a bishop who is currently a Trustee of Christian Aid; another bishop who was Chair of Christian Aid from 1998 to 2008; and his predecessor in that post. The organization claims that it 'works for a just peace for the people of Palestine and Israel' and 'promotes non-violence and reconciliation'.

Introduction

I'm a Christian and a one-time Christian Aid donor who believes there's a problem here. I started this blog to make the point (in 2005, having first raised the subject in a letter to Christian Aid in 2002 - the problem is not a new one). This is an update on these concerns which I've been encouraged to write having received an e-mail from a reader who belongs to a Liberal synagogue. He and others in the Liberal Judaism movement are unhappy that the movement is linking up with Christian Aid to campaign on climate change. They're not against the link in principle, but they do think Christian Aid should clean up its Middle East campaigning act first.

Blows have been exchanged in the LJ movement's magazine (here on page 4) but so far the debate seems just a little short on facts. Naturally it's not for me to tell Jews what to think, but I do think they ought to know what they're getting into. So I offer this post as a contribution to informed debate.

The Big, Big Issue

I started off my blog with a series of posts analyzing coverage of Israel and Palestine in Christian Aid News, the charity's magazine. This is how I summed up what I found:-

'Over the last seven issues [Summer 2003 to Summer 2005] of Christian Aid News more than 17 pages were devoted to Israel and Palestine. Most of this coverage involved political criticism of Israel. The most coverage any other conflict zone got was 4.5 pages for Angola – barely a quarter as much. Sudan, scene of more than two million deaths in the civil wars of the past two decades and, in the UN’s words, “the worst humanitarian crisis in the world”, got 2.5 pages. These include a full page feature about a woman who makes perfume. It tells you her recipe.'

Has anything changed over the four years since then? You can easily see for yourself. Go to the Christian Aid website. Click on the tab marked policy. Here you'll find policy papers filed under ten headings. Nine are for general and global issues - climate change, trade, and so on. One is for a specific area of the world: the Middle East. Click on this one: there are eight papers filed here, written between 2003 and 2008. One is a 2003 expose of alleged American theft of Iraqi wealth (did CA ever publish a 'hard-hitting report' on Saddam Hussein's regime?). The other seven all deal with Israel and Palestine.

You will search in vain for even one position paper on those conflicts in Sudan (and even if there was one, you could be pretty sure it would pull its punches when it came to apportioning blame; Omar Bashir's regime is touchy about what aid agencies say about it).

Sometimes slightly more subtle ways are found of justifying a preoccupation with a region slightly smaller than Belgium. During Lent this year Christian Aid led a 'virtual pilgrimage' around the Holy Land. Now the pilgrimage is of course a venerable Christian tradition, but pious tradition is not something that usually concerns Christian Aid overmuch. In this instance the pilgrimage furnished the perfect pretext for bringing sustained political criticism of Israel to a wider audience. Given a little imagination, a virtual pilgrimage could very well range across the entire world, but Christian Aid chose to do it differently, and that choice, it can scarcely be doubted, was very much a political one.

It's hard to see how this fixation with Israel and Palestine can be understood as (in the words of Liberal Judaism CEO Rabbi Danny Rich) 'seek[ing] to fulfil a humanitarian mandate'. On the contrary, its perverse consequence is that other areas of the world suffering human rights abuses on a vastly greater scale simply get ignored. You might expect that an international development agency like CA would be concerned to redress the neglect of many such places by mainstream media and political discourse in Britain. Instead it concentrates on the tiny scrap of land that's already a focus for relentless media overkill.

The sheer volume of coverage would tend to create a false impression - of Israel as a rogue state without peer - even if it were all scrupulously even-handed (it isn't). Whenever that perception is created it gives rise to undestandable anger. Not everyone is sophisticated enough to maintain a strict distinction between anger against Israel and anger against Jews (nor indeed do the sophisticated necessarily maintain it). For some the natural outlet for anger is violence and abuse. For many more it leads to a gradual desensitization to the proposition that the Jews are a people afflicted with a fundamental moral flaw.

The Tonge Connection

I've already hinted that my objections to Christian Aid's coverage of the conflict have to do with more than its sheer volume. At this point I take up the thread begun with the two quotations at the start of this post.

The name of the Liberal Democrat politician Jenny Tonge, now Baroness Tonge, will be all too familiar to many Jews. In 2004 a comment suggesting that Palestinian terrorism was an understandable reaction to the conditions of occupation led to her being sacked by party leader Charles Kennedy from the Lib Dem front bench. Two years later her statement at the party conference that "the pro-Israeli lobby has got its grips on the western world, its financial grips. I think they've probably got a grip on our party." was denounced by Kennedy's successor Menzies Campbell as having "clear anti-Semitic connotations." She is someone who has plainly moved way beyond legitimate criticism of Israel.

Earlier in 2006 Baroness Tonge had been appointed a Trustee of Christian Aid. After her conference speech the charity sought to portray it as irrelevant to her work with them. However, her position had evidently become untenable and she resigned her Trusteeship soon afterwards. I have little doubt that this was a result of pressure put on CA by responsible church leaders, but Tonge was no less certain that the pressure had come from a different quarter. As she wrote in an e-mail to a student:-

'After criticizing the lobby in a fringe meeting at conference (just after the publication of the book I mentioned [i.e. Mearsheimer and Walt, The Israel Lobby]) I had to stand down from the board of Christian Aid because they had been warned by the BOD [Board of Deputies of British Jews], that my membership would endanger projects going ahead in the West Bank and Gaza.'

So was this the end of Christian Aid's association with this deplorable conspiracy theorist? By no means. The connection is now a little less direct, but it is nevertheless alive and well. Baroness Tonge is currently a Patron of Friends of Sabeel UK, a group which promotes the nationalist liberation theology of the Palestinian Anglican Canon Naim Ateek. Its declared aim is to work for a just peace, which it may or may not be doing; what is evident from its website is that it promotes a one-sided propagandist narrative of the conflict and its origins, and that it campaigns against the Israeli security barrier without acknowledging that the barrier is a response to the deliberate killing of hundreds of civilians.

Friends of Sabeel UK declares prominently on its website that it is a partner of Christian Aid. It can be assumed that the partnership is to FoSUK's advantage financially; Charity Commission records shows it raising barely half as much as it spends. The honour of being a Patron is one that Baroness Tonge shares with, among others, Professor Michael Taylor, former director of Christian Aid, Michael Langrish, Bishop of Exeter and a Trustee of Christian Aid, and John Gladwin, Bishop of Chelmsford and Chair of Christian Aid from 1998 to 2008.

The point of establishing this connection is that by now it would take pretty high levels of anti-Israel obsessionalism - and a pretty insouciant attitude towards anti-Semitism - to make anyone want to make common cause against Israel with Baroness Tonge. Two Liberal Democrat leaders have distanced themselves from her; the top brass of Christian Aid are doing quite the reverse.

A Connection Too Far

The Friends of Sabeel website reveals another connection that is, if anything, even more disturbing than that with Baroness Tonge. For also on the list of Patrons is Ibrahim Hewitt, "coordinator of the Palestine relief organisation Interpal".

The Harry's Place blog has made something of a speciality of researching Interpal and its relationship to Hamas. Rather than duplicate HP's efforts, I invite readers to inform themselves here and here, and specifically on Ibrahim Hewitt here. Follow the link to Mr Hewitt's pamphlet "What does Islam Say?" and note, for example, his opinions on the proper punishments for apostates (death) and homosexuals (one hundred lashes, or death). That he is comfortable with the proposition that those converting from Islam to Christianity deserve to forfeit their lives is not only ironic given that he is himself a convert with an at least nominally Christian background, but also makes him, one would think, a remarkable bedfellow for a brace of bishops.

Agreed, that is not directly relevant to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Not so the second of the quotes at the beginning of this post, also from Mr Hewitt's pamphlet and quoted in a recent Harry's Place post. Here it is again:-

'International law accepts that people living under illegal military occupation are entitled to fight against the occupiers with whatever means they have at their disposal. If the world does not like, for example, “terrorist suicide bombing” in Palestine (a weapon neither unique to the Palestinians nor invented by them), then, as one Palestinian exile said at a conference in December 2003, “Give us F-16s, Apache helicopters, missiles tanks and heavy weapons, and we’ll have a fair fight”.'

Hewitt further underlines this position by quoting approvingly from "contemporary Islâmic scholar, Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi", who has consistently upheld the right of Palestinians to resort to terrorism.

This is not, repeat not, about Mr Hewitt being a Muslim, nor is it about the fact that he sympathizes with the Palestinians. The issue is this: his argument that Palestinians are entitled to kill Israeli civilians is one which Christians must reject as morally intolerable. The claim that "international law" vindicates terrorism is of course preposterous; far less can it be vindicated by any credibly Christian ethic. I cannot justify deliberately murdering the unarmed and defenceless by appealing to a group identity which they share with others whose military might exceeds my own. To assert otherwise is, apart from any other consideration, inherently racist where the group identity in question is a racial one, as it plainly is in the case of Palestinian terrorism.

The principle I have just stated may or may not have been infringed by members of the Israeli forces in Gaza. If and to the extent it has been, that is deplorable. Where Palestinian terrorism is concerned no 'ifs' arise. That the infringement has occurred and that it has indeed been premeditated and deliberate is beyond question, and this infringement is precisely what Mr Hewitt seeks to vindicate in the quote above. And this presents Christian Aid and Friends of Sabeel UK with a choice. Either they can claim the moral high ground for their efforts on behalf of the Palestinians, or they can argue from political expediency that their tent should be large enough to accommodate Ibrahim Hewitt. But they cannot do both.

Christian Aid and Hamas

What, then, is Ibrahim Hewitt, a Muslim with extreme religious and political views, doing as a Patron of a Christian charity? It's just possible that the Christian Aiders are not aware quite how extreme his views actually are. On the other hand, it's not necessary to assume that they are ignorant of his and Interpal's stance towards Hamas. For Christian Aid itself seems to be by no means hostile towards Hamas.

It consistently offers no criticism of Hamas to balance its repeated criticisms of Israel. It consistently avoids use of the word "terrorism"; whilst its official statements condemn "violence" in general terms, there is never any suggestion that the deliberate killing of non-combattants deserves special condemnation. Nor is there any acknowledgement that Hamas has been one of the foremost sponsors of violence of this type, nor that it is intransigently hostile to the existence of Israel, which Christian Aid is officially committed to upholding.

There is more on this theme in my response to a Christian Aid parliamentary briefing produced in 2006 and typical of an approach which has been entirely consistent before and since.

Further evidence of Christian Aid's approach can be found on Friends of Sabeel UK's website. The FAQ page starts with the question "Is Sabeel anti-semitic?" - revealing a certain defensiveness, perhaps. The answer begins with "No" and ends with criticism of Israel. It contains no mention of the explicit anti-Semitism of Hamas.

The events page lists FoSUK as one of the supporters of the "Free Palestine!" demonstration in London on 16 May 2009. Also in the list of supporters are the Muslim Association of Britain ("the British franchise of Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood", in the words of Harry's Place) and Viva Palestina, under whose auspices George Galloway made his way to Gaza to hand over a wad of cash to Hamas. Viva Palestina is under investigation by the Charity Commission following this escapade (it is, after all, illegal to fund Hamas even if you don't have charitable status) - see this Harry's Place post which also notes the organization's close links with Ibrahim Hewitt's Interpal.

The Charity Commission seems happy to grant charities a good deal of leeway for political campaigning, and only under fairly extreme provocation does it bestir itself even to launch an investigation. Personally, I believe that this degree of politicization makes nonsense of the very concept of charity; even if the Commissioners disagree, it really is not acceptable for the churches which sponsor Christian Aid to share their indulgence.

The security barrier

'Christian Aid has expressed unequivocal support for the security of Israel and the rights of all Israeli people to live safely and securely' writes Rabbi Rich. Indeed it has. The problem is that there is a large gap between what the organization says in bland official statements (largely to keep the Charity Commission and/or the Archbishop of Canterbury off its back, I suspect) and what it actually practises. For in practice its support for the security of Israel is hedged about by the equivocations that surface whenever Israel takes action to safeguard its citizens.

The homepage of Friends of Sabeel UK features a photo of what is described elsewhere as an "armed Israeli lookout tower on the ‘Apartheid’ Wall". Another photo features "A Friends of Sabeel demonstration against the continued construction of the wall".

What has the security barrier meant for Israelis? Bearing in mind that construction began in 2003, the graph here tells its own story (I would not usually rely on an Israeli - or any other - government source, but the figures are not in dispute). To bring the picture up to date, one Israeli woman was killed by a suicide bombing in February 2008 (the bomber had come across the barrier-free border with Jordan). As I write that is the most recent suicide attack to have occurred in Israel. Hamas and Islamic Jihad have both acknowledged that their attacks have been frustrated by the presence of the barrier.

When Pope Benedict visited the Holy Land he described the security barrier as one of the saddest sights of his trip, and looked forward to a future in which it would have disappeared. But he also stated clearly that this was contingent on a renunciation of violence and aggression by all sides. That was an expression of 'unequivocal support for the security of Israel' and a model for Christians. It is sadly not the view of the Christian Aiders gathered together as Friends of Sabeel.

It might sound outrageous to suggest that the Friends of Sabeel want it made easier for Palestinians to kill Jews. But in June 2006 Baroness Tonge wrote complainingly in a letter to the Independent 'It should come as no surprise to anyone that suicide bombers in Iraq are Palestinians. Israel's security wall is forcing them to export themselves to another arena [...]' (my emphasis). Lest we forget, Baroness Tonge is a Patron of Friends of Sabeel UK and a very special friend of Christian Aid.

To be continued

This long post has been too long in the writing. For this I offer my apologies to the reader who asked me to write it, whilst leaving further thoughts for a follow-up post.

Update: the follow-up is here.


Appendix 1: selected past posts on Christian Aid

My June 2005 introduction to the blog

On the appalling 'Child of Bethlehem' Christmas appeal and its invocation of ancient tropes of Christian anti-Semitism

CA as Manichaeans

Demonizing imagery, and selective quotation from Rowan Williams

CA flies two MPs to Gaza - one of them just happens to be Jenny Tonge

A pat on the back for CA, for supporting a genuine peace initiative

On a student-oriented website which earned CA an award from the New Statesman

An open letter to the Director of Christian Aid (he didn't reply)

My reply to a comment from a Christian Aid employee

On episcopal politics and the beginning of CA's campaign against the security barrier

On Christian Aid advocacy for Hamas - with an update

On CA collaboration with War on Want and the Muslim Council of Britain

On Baroness Tonge's graduation to outright support for Hamas


Appendix 2: the charitable objectives of Friends of Sabeel UK

As lodged with the Charity Commission:-

(3.) THE CHARITY'S OBJECTS ARE:

(3.1) TO SUPPORT THE SABEEL THEOLOGY CENTRE IN JERUSALEM IN ITS WORK FOR THE PROMOTION OF RELIGION FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE COMMUNITY

(3.2) TO SUPPORT AND ENCOURAGE THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY IN THE HOLY LAND (ISRAEL AND THE PALESTINIAN AREAS OF GAZA, THE WEST BANK AND EAST JERUSALEM) IN THEIR LIFE AND WITNESS

(3.3) TO RAISE AWARENESS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM CONCERNING CHRISTIANS IN THE HOLY LAND AND TO PROMOTE LINKS WITH THEM.

Among friends

Harry's Place has a post on the Friends of Sabeel, revealing that, although Baroness Tonge may have been ousted from her Trusteeship at Christian Aid, prominent supporters of CA are still happy to rub shoulders with her - and with other apologists for terrorism.

As I've noted in the comments, Michael Langrish and John Gladwin, fellow patrons of Friends of Sabeel with Tonge, are bishops of Exeter and Chelmsford respectively. Langrish is currently a Trustee of Christian Aid. Gladwin stepped down last year after 10 years as Chair of CA. So much for CA distancing itself from Tonge and her like.

A seasonal post

'To make sense of a conflict in which both sides claim to be victims requires more than an emotional response to gory pictures. I support the Palestinian right to self-determination. But I am disturbed by the rise of anti-Israeli sentiments in Britain and the West, as when my old friends on the Left declared: “We are all Hezbollah now.”

'There is a tendency to reduce the Middle East to a simplistic morality play where Good battles Evil, projecting our own victim politics on to other people's complex conflicts.

'The Israelis I met bear no comparison with the caricature of expansionist “Zio-Nazis”. [...]'

- Mick Hume reports on a visit to Israel, and puts the concerns actuating this blog into a nutshell. The tendencies he describes continue to find an echo in the churches.

Simplistic morality plays have an enduring appeal for Christians of a certain sort, and the traditional view that the festive season is incomplete without some Jewish baddies is enjoying quite a comeback - as I noted in my post on Christian Aid's 2004 Christmas Appeal. This year we've had priests saying it with carols - either by banning them or, worse, rewriting them.


There's not much to be added to this post from a couple of years ago. It's been a year in which innocent civilians in Israel have been blessedly secure from the attentions of suicide bombers. It's also been a year in which innocent civilians in Bethlehem have continued to suffer misery resulting from the Israeli security barrier. These facts are not unrelated (that the will to butcher Jews is alive and well has been gruesomely confirmed in Mumbai). The world is complicated, and surely nowhere more so in the Middle East.


To left-leaning Christians whose emotional response to the conflict has been reinforced by a pre-Advent pilgrimage: I don't want you to be silent about what the people in Bethlehem are going through (though I would like you to revise the silent assumption that Darfur, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zimbabwe are of lesser concern simply because you don't choose to take your holidays there). I do want you to give it a basic level of context, to hear and tell the Israeli story too, to acknowledge that it takes two to make peace. When you fail to do that, whatever blend of naivete, political dogmatism and - just possibly - prejudice it is that actuates you, you hand the terrorists a propaganda victory to compensate them for their lost opportunities for slaughter.


One or two further messages. To Mr Stephen Hugh-Jones: thank you for your comments; be assured that I'm not ignoring you, and will have my say in due course. To the little band of regulars who have appreciated my posts, apologies that you've been having a thin time lately. It's been something of an annus horribilis for Mrs Cyrus and myself, and I've often felt blogging is the last thing I want to do after a day in front of the computer. I hope for rather better things in the New Year.


To all readers, peace and joy over the remainder of the Christmas season and in the New Year, and (I need hardly add) please continue to pray for peace in the Holy Land.

Baroness Tonge and Christian Aid: knifed by the Lobby?

Having described Baroness Tonge as a former trustee of Christian Aid, it's only fair to add that her tenure of the post was brief. Appointed in April 2006, she stepped down at the charity's AGM in November of the same year.

Was she pushed? Of course. But by whom? Not, for sure, by Christian Aid's own mandarins - not, at least, unless someone else was leaning on them. Instead of disowning her appalling views on terrorism they ducked the issue with the breathtakingly disingenuous claim that her remarks were 'outside the remit of a development organisation which deals with issues of poverty and humanitarian relief'. My reaction to this piece of bovine manure is here.

It seems the Baroness may have recently given us a clue to her own views about who did the pushing. Here she is, speaking in a House of Lords debate on 2 July:-

“I am beginning to understand the power of the Israel lobby, active here as well as in the USA, with AIPAC, the Friends of Israel and the Board of Deputies. They take vindictive actions against people who oppose and criticise the lobby, getting them removed from positions that they hold and preventing them from speaking — even on unrelated subjects, in my case. I understand their methods. I have many examples. They make constant accusations of antisemitism, when no such sentiment exists, to silence Israel’s critics.”


(from Engage; the whole speech is in Hansard).

Whether she is talking about her exit from Christian Aid or her earlier enforced exit from the Lib Dem front bench (or both), the issues are the same, so let's for the sake of convenience assume the former.


The phrase "the Israel lobby" has of course acquired its place in "respectable" political discourse thanks to Mearsheimer and Walt's eponymous book. It may have been a shoddy piece of work but it has done its job: like a virus the phrase has entered our collective bloodstream.


A telling insight into the quality of Mearsheimer and Walt's analysis came from their insinuation that the Lobby had "got its grips" (to use the words applied by Baroness Tonge to her own party) into the Church of England. My extended riposte to this claim is here. Clearly, though, it has explanatory force for Baroness Tonge: Church leaders got her kicked out of her Christian Aid trusteeship because they go in fear of the Board of Deputies.


What is the reality here? So far from the Board being an omnipresent, omnipotent lobby with its grips in every institution, it has been savaged by Rabbi Sidney Brichto in the latest issue of the excellent new magazine Standpoint for its timidity in making the case for Israel in an environment where anti-Israel sentiment is ubiquitous.


I surmise that the reasons for Baroness Tonge's exit from her trusteeship were eminently straightforward. Namely that in the upper echelons of the Churches there are to be found decent and reasonable Christians who uphold Israel's right to exist and her citizens' right to life, and that they were not prepared to accept that an apologist for terrorism should hold a post in an official agency of the Churches. My guess is that CA's bosses privately sympathized with the Baroness but were not willing to stick their necks out for her. A public row with Church leaders could easily damage the charity's standing among ordinary churchgoers - and thus its income. That, by the way, is the parameter within which it plays at radicalism. In a way I have more respect for War on Want, which makes no bones about its politics and raises its cash from those who think as it does.


And what role did Jews, inside or outside the Board of Deputies, play? Well, Jews have good reason to be well-informed and concerned about the Baroness's views, and I can well believe there were some who alerted their Christian contacts to her track record and argued that she was not an approriate person to hold such a position. You can call this lobbying by all means, but it is not, repeat not, an instance of The Lobby at work, pulling the strings of those nominally in authority. It is - need I say it - a normal way for human beings to conduct their affairs. It bore fruit because decent and reasonable Christians found themselves in agreement with it - through persuasion, not through intimidation.


There are, I fear, two factors which would make it hard for Baroness Tonge to give this scenario credence. The first is that she appears to be so totally convinced of the rightness of her cause that she cannot conceive of anyone - especially a Gentile - disagreeing with her in good faith. In this she exemplifies the almost cult-like character of the anti-Israel movement. If they will not acknowledge how evil Israel is there must be sinister forces at work.

And with that we arrive at the second factor. My scenario assumes that Jews are ordinary human beings who feel, think and act in the way ordinary human beings feel, think and act and have ordinary human powers. For someone who sees the Board of Deputies as the local branch of the Lobby, and bishops and Lib Dem leaders alike as its abject puppets, that assumption has already ceased to be self-evident. And the reason for devoting a longish post to a person of no huge importance in herself is that these attitudes now reach deep into the mainstream.

Found on the cutting-room floor

(after putting the previous post in the can)


1. Looking at the 'sending organizations' page of the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel site, I see that Norway, Sweden, Finland and Germany are all well represented, but a small country in the middle has gone missing.

No great surprise there. This is from one of my posts last year:-

'We heard about racist Jews in Israel, but not that Hamas is an organization with an overtly anti-Semitic ideology.

'It's not as if EAPPI haven't had direct experience of the bigotry of some Palestinians. Last year, when the 'Mohammed cartoons' affair blew up, their Danish volunteers had to be sent home for their own safety, and even now, although there are several Norwegian and Swedish accompaniers, there are no Danes. But the only bigotry we heard about in church was Jewish bigotry.'


2. The Toronto Conference of the United Churches of Canada offers a page of 'Holy Land Information'. Prospective visitors are warned against using Israeli guides:-

'From our experience, the Israeli guides' versions of history -- ancient as well as current -- support the current Israeli political agenda and should not be accepted uncritically. Expect to hear about Palestinian "terrorists".'

Dear me, how tedious. Don't worry, though, there is a much more appealing alternative:-

'Witnessing Israel/Palestine with Palestinian guides will present a perspective that may be new to visitors. Palestinians will be seen as generous, kind, and courageous human beings (as opposed to abstractions).'

Unlike some other people we could name. And just to be on the safe side you can also innoculate yourself in advance against that dreadful Israeli pseudo-history. An impartial reading list is provided: it doesn't include Benny Morris but does include Ilan Pappé, Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein. Yes, him.

Don't these people love Jews?


3. While exploring the National-Zeitung, the German neo-Nazi paper to which Ilan Pappé unwittingly gave an interview, I found an article headed 'Is Islam Germany's enemy?'. It's a piece where some reading between the lines is needed, remembering that Holocaust denial is illegal in Germany. History shows that Germany and the Muslim world are natural allies, the article argues. It cites the fact that Germany and the Ottoman Empire fought on the same side in the First World War, and then there's this photo caption:-

'Tens of thousands of Muslims fought on the German side in the Second World War and millions of Muslims hoped for a German victory, as many of their leading politicians made clear even after the Second World War. Our picture shows Muslim soldiers of the Waffen-SS Division "Handschar" praying in the direction of Mecca.'

Unfortunately, though, German-Muslim relations have been poisoned by Germany's post-war alliance with Israel. Chancellor Angela Merkel is pilloried for upholding the alliance as the fulfilment of a moral obligation. On the other hand Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's claim that Holocaust 'researchers' are being persecuted is quoted with approval. Here we must supply the connection that dare not speak its name: if 'research' should prove that the Holocaust is a myth, Germany's moral debt to the Jewish people would of course be null and void.

There's another reading list at the end of the article. The titles tell their own story: 'Who is Merkel really working for?', 'The Network: Israel's lobby in Germany' and 'Blackmail'. The Holocaust denier Gerard Menuhin makes an appearance. Oh, look, there's our friend Norman Finkelstein again, too - entirely against his will, I'm sure, just like Pappé.

The Muslim Waffen-SS division was recruited mainly from Bosnians, but a prime mover in its formation was Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem. This Palestinian nationalist leader, who spent the years 1941-5 in Berlin, has now been made the subject of a biography - in German, but hopefully it will be translated.

According to a review I've seen, what the book makes particularly clear is that al-Husseini's alliance with the Nazis was no mere tactical marriage of convenience. He was a fanatical anti-Semite, well-informed about the Nazis' plans for the extermination of the Jews and an unreserved supporter of them. Indeed he played his own part in them, as when he ensured the failure of a Red Cross initiative to exchange 5,000 Jewish children for 20,000 German prisoners of war.

It's a standard pro-Palestinian propaganda trope to say that the Palestinians have become innocent indirect victims of the Holocaust. As ever, the truth behind the slogans is far more complex. I can't tell you whether the biography addresses the question of how far al-Husseini's attitudes were shared by his fellow Palestinians. Certainly he had opponents; equally certainly he was not alone. The perception of him as a hero of the anti-British and anti-Zionist resistance is doubtless what led Bishop Riah of Jerusalem to respond to a question about his Nazi connections with point-blank denial.

Christian volunteers and neo-Nazis: the Ilan Pappé fan club

The posting's been distinctly sparse and rather unfocussed of late, but here at last is a real back-to-basics piece.

It begins with an anniversary: Pentecost is not far behind us, and it called to mind my experience at Pentecost last year at the church I then belonged to. How, after the celebration of one of the Church's great feasts, recalling the gift of the Holy Spirit, the sacred space was given over to a presentation of Israel-demonizing propaganda given by two volunteers from the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel.

I never did get round to finishing my write-up of this. But I did write this on the reactivation of the ancient anti-Semitic slander of well-poisoning. Also this and this.

Unfair and unbalanced criticism of Israel is a way of defaming the Jewish people. It is the way of defaming the Jewish people that is practised by many and accepted by more in the West today. It is a point of contact between anti-Semites and those who would indignantly deny anti-Semitism. And it nudges the door open for other, more 'classical', more blatant anti-Semitic themes. The poisoning of the wells is one example. More broadly, there is the sense that there must be some kind of conspiracy allowing Israel to 'get away with it'; worse still, the perception of Jews as so depraved that they could quite feasibly have invented the Holocaust. That is not, of course, a respectable point of view, but the boundaries are getting blurred in a way which would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. A Holocaust-denying musicians gets regular gigs courtesy of the Socialist Workers Party, whilst Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has plenty of apologists on the left despite his hosting of a Holocaust deniers' conference.

It would be unfair to dwell on the fact that the presentation took place in the city from which the extermination of the Jews was planned and directed, but it certainly intensified my sense of a desecration taking place, and it is legitimate to mention it as being symptomatic of the lack of reflectiveness over this issue in the Church. It's as if we've ticked the 'amends for the Holocaust' box, we can keep things ticking over by inviting a rabbi to church every so often, and can move on to fresher items on the agenda - items taken over directly from the secular left-liberal political agenda.

Others in the congregation agreed with me, but I can't pretend that they are in the majority. My latest visit to that church happened to coincide with the Sunday on which, at the end of the service, a 'commissioning' prayer was said for one of the two volunteers before his departure on another 'tour of duty' on the the West Bank. Well, I'm happy to be asked to pray for my brother in Christ - I do, though not, I fear, in the way he would want. I'm not at all happy to be told that he has a calling from God to do what he's doing. Sorry, but no 'Amen' to that from me. May it prove so - buit it will not if it results in a repeat of that Pentecost propaganda-fest. Not everyone who says 'peace, peace' is actually serving the cause of peace.

Soon after his presentation last year, I had a discussion/argument with Volunteer C in which he urged me to inform myself by reading the Israeli 'New Historian' Ilan Pappé. I had read enough about Pappé to be sceptical of this advice, and my scepticism was not diminished when I discovered that Volunteer C, though well briefed on Israeli atrocities, had never heard of the 1941 Baghdad pogrom, and when he registered surprise at my suggestion that the number of Jews displaced from Arab countries after 1947 was comparable with the number of Palestinians who lost their homes in the 'Nakba'. It didn't sound to me as if reading Pappé promoted a balanced view of the conflict.

Volunteer C's companion contributed to an article for EAPPI's magazine (PDF) listing '40 Ways to End the Occupation'. Item 9 is:-

'Ask your library to order books that show the Palestinian side of the conflict, i.e., Ilan Pappe Ethnic Cleansing'

- as opposed to books attempting to give a balanced analysis of the complexities of the conflict. Spread the word, folks!

If you do, be prepared to find yourself in some very strange company. As it happens, Pappé was in Germany recently. One of the interviews he gave duly appeared... in a notorious neo-Nazi rag.
As David Hirsh of Engage observes, it's one more in a long line of 'whoops' moments. I note in a comment on this that the one that sticks in my memory is when A N Wilson used his Evening Standard column (in 2002 or thereabouts) to plug an Israel-demonizing book by an American neo-Nazi. Wilson didn't realize. Pappé didn't realize. For both, that's all there is to be said.

It does seem extraordinary that Pappé gave a substantial interview without inquiring which paper was going to publish it. If he did ask, you might think that the name 'National-Zeitung' ought to have set alarm bells ringing. A historian with German Jewish parents (they 'emigrated from Berlin to Palestine during the National Socialist period' says the potted biography accompanying the interview, as if they'd just fancied a change of scene) might be expected to know that in Germany the word 'national' carries some very heavy historical baggage. No mainstream paper would dream of including it in its name.

For Pappé's interviewer, he was not the first left-wing 'scalp'. He's also interviewed Luisa Morgantini, an Italian Communist and Vice-President of the European Parliament (German source). She told him that 'Israel practises apartheid'. I don't know what her excuse was for giving an interview to a neo-Nazi.

Well, OK, Pappé made a mistake. It happens. It doesn't make him a Nazi. But is that really all that needs to be said before we draw a line under this unfortunate incident? Pappé fans like Volunteer C would do well to ponder the question posed by one of the commenters at Harry's Place:-

'“I would like to stress that my ideology and moral stance are in total contradiction to what this newspaper represent”

- I wonder why National Zeitung had the opposite opinion?'

And, believe me, the paper's all over him. Here's its introduction to the interview:-

'On 14 May 1948 in the then British Mandate territory of Palestine the "Jewish National Council" unilaterally declared independence in defiance of international law. Simultaneously the expulsion of large parts of the indigenous Arab majority population was started. The same fate also befell the German minority, which had already between 1939 and 1948 been systematically and forcibly resettled in Australia by the British Mandate administration. The events of 1948, which have been comprehensively described for the first time by the Israeli historian Professor Ilan Pappé, spelt the end of the era of a liberal Islam and are at the root of the still continuing Middle East conflict. In conversation with Erhard Düvel of the National-Zeitung the author expressed the view that 14 May 1948 is no cause for celebration for the international community.'

So when Pappé receives this e-mail from German journalist Gudrun Eussner (again from this article, in German but the e-mails are in English), you might think it was a challenge which he ought to take seriously:-

'Whatever you tell now about this unauthorized interview, you don´t adress the fact, that your ideas are so much in harmony with the nazis, that they are welcomed to be published by their media. Professor, you are nazi-compatible, they do love Jews like you. Be proud of it!
'Gudrun Eussner'

Pappé's reply?

'As this my last word to you, i suggest you read your own email, you make a very good Nazi yourself. In fact this is the tragedy of Zionism that it turned people like you to be nazi-compatible. thank god there are other humanist Jews in the world. Otherwise it would have been a terrible Nazi success if we were left only with people like you'

Nyaah, nyaah, nya-nyaah, nyaah, Nazi yourself! Where on earth do you start with an argument like that? Eussner questions how Pappé comes to get himself published in a Nazi newspaper and by that very act shows herself to be the Nazi.

Let us turn to something a little more adult. Courtesy of another Harry's Place commenter, here are links to a review of Pappé's History of Modern Palestine by fellow Israeli historian Benny Morris:-

http://www.ee.bgu.ac.il/~censor/katz-directory/04-03-22benny-morris-The%20New%20Republic-1.pdf
http://www.ee.bgu.ac.il/~censor/katz-directory/04-03-22benny-morris-The%20New%20Republic-2.pdf
http://www.ee.bgu.ac.il/~censor/katz-directory/04-03-22benny-morris-The%20New%20Republic-3.pdf

Morris convicts Pappé of a string of factual errors, but sees something more than sloppiness at work. Here's his 'money quote' from the book:-

'my [pro-Palestinian] bias is apparent despite the desire of my peers that I stick to facts and the 'truth' when reconstructing past realities. I view any such construction as vain and presumptuous. This book is written by one who admits compassion for the colonized not the colonizer; who sympathizes with the occupied not the occupiers; and sides with the workers not the bosses. He feels for women in distress, and has little admiration for men in command.... Mine is a subjective approach....'

Now I'm not equipped to give any kind of definitive evaluation as to whether Benny Morris is a better historian than Ilan Pappé. But I can at least say that, by his own account, he is at least trying to do the job of a historian, which is to find out as nearly as possible 'what happened back then'. And that he is really trying to do this is confirmed by the fact that, though he is a committed Zionist, he does not shy away from uncomfortable truths in the history of Zionism. That is to say, he can tolerate moral ambiguity. Doesn't necessarily mean he likes it, but he can handle it (does this review read like an account of a right-wing Zionist whitewash?). Whereas Pappé gives the decided impression that he cannot, and his appeal is to others who cannot. And I suspect that his rejection of 'objective' history results less from the belief that it is impossible than from the fear that its findings will prove irreducibly morally ambiguous. Better therefore to turn history into a narrative that unambiguously serves the cause of those who are (somehow!) unambiguously the Good Guys.

It's certainly what an awful lot of people want to hear. In March Pappé's book occupied third place on the non-fiction best-seller list in Germany (source: Gudrun Eusslen, citing the publisher's website). For Johann Hari of the Independent - backed up by a raft of readers' letters this week - Pappé is the infallible, unassailable authority on the 1948 war - Morris, Schmorris! So when Hari comes under fire it can only mean that he is the victim of a vast, malign conspiracy to cover up the truth about Israel - putting him in the company not only of Pappé but also of Norman Finkelstein. Thank God, once again, for the sanity of fellow Indie writer Howard Jacobson.

People like Pappé and his disciples (at least the ones who aren't neo-Nazis) can do great good or great harm. It all depends on whether the cause they embrace is as good as they have decided it is. The problem tends to be that they see their embracing of it as in itself the guarantee that it is good, and that makes reappraisals difficult.

And the interview in the National-Zeitung shows how self-defeating the Pappé approach to history is. He has shaped his historical narrative to serve an ideological cause, but, lo and behold, it turns out that it can serve more causes than one - including one he considers 'in total contradiction' to his own. For, after all, the Deutsche Volksunion is not fussy about historical truth either, nor is it fussy about what kind of 'useful idiots' it presses into service. Even a Jew - no, especially a Jew - will do nicely.

In trying to make history Palestinian-friendly, Pappé has made it Nazi-friendly. In trying to suppress moral ambiguity he has created it.

Conversely, the most reliable way for him to ensure that he doesn't get any more unwanted overtures from this quarter would be to start writing Benny Morris-style history, narrating human affairs as the tangled, messy, warts-and-all business that experience tells us they are. And, trusting that, in the long run, truth will serve the good better than falsehood, to follow John Donne's injunction to 'doubt wisely'.

Back to Volunteer C, for whom my hope is also that he may learn to 'doubt wisely'. He gave me an expensively-produced brochure published by the German branch of EAPPI (equivalent material in English can be inspected here). I could write a very long critique of the bias and distortions in the text - not least the Pappé-esque account of the 1948 war - but perhaps it's the pictures which carry the strongest message. Palestinians appear as civilians trying to go about their peaceful business in nightmarish conditions. Israel is represented exclusively by images of violence and oppression: coils of barbed wire, a watchtower on the separation barrier, gun-toting soldiers, settler children throwing stones. Nothing to hint that Palestinians can ever be the authors of violence or Israeli Jews its innocent victims. The technique is familiar: see what I wrote here about an issue of Christian Aid News.

It does with pictures what Ilan Pappé openly admits that he is trying to do with history. If it had been produced by the Deutsche Volksunion, publishers of the 'National-Zeitung', how different would it look?


Here is a list of the Accompaniment Programme's 'sending organizations'. What these bodies are doing is investing substantial sums of money into the propagation of the Ilan Pappé narrative of Palestinian victimhood and Israeli wickedness. This is not a peripheral spin-off from a worthy peacemaking enterprise; it is central to the whole operation: 'you must commit to doing extensive advocacy on return to your home country', prospective volunteers are advised, and anyone whose advocacy might be 'off-message' is unlikely to welcomed as a volunteer.

So, to round it off, a simple question to Churches Together in Britain and Ireland, Christian Aid, CAFOD, Pax Christi Germany, the United Church of Canada, the Episcopal Church (USA) and all the rest: if this is a project of Christian mission, how come it is so hard to distinguish from the project of the Deutsche Volksunion?

Barack and his padre (updated)

Well, I suppose it's one way to get your church magazine noticed: reprint an article by a Hamas functionary. It could cause a little embarrassment for one of your parishioners, though, if he's set his sights on the White House.

This is plainly a church after Christian Aid's collective heart. But those of us who don't admire anti-Semitic terrorists badly need to hear some reassuring words from candidate Obama.

Update: in response to the comment that's been posted here, I should say that I'm not calling on Obama to disown Jeremiah Wright personally - as a fellow Christian - in addition to disowning his views. The commenter is quite right about us being 'family' in the Body of Christ however much we may disagree. My goodness, if I were to walk out of every church where I took issue with the priest's politics...

But there is an 'on the other hand' here. Because there is a point at which a 'gospel' which has become purely an instrument serving political and/or racial ends ceases to be in any true sense the Christian gospel. Example (simply to make the point): the 'Deutsche Christen' movement in Nazi Germany. I hope that the distinction is not lost on Barack Obama and that the faith to which he was introduced by Pastor Wright was - notwithstanding the unashamed blackness of his church - indeed the Christian faith.

Throat clearers

So, 'throat clearing' is the correct terminology for the 'legitimate security concerns, but' syndrome, courtesy of the incomparable Christopher Hitchens. Hitch's moral clearsightedness on these issues earns him forgiveness for his unfortunate religiophobic tendencies. Thanks, Paul M, for a prompt reply to my question, and a very merry Christmas from all at Schloss Grumpy and/or a deplorably belated 'happy Hannukah' to you and all who were celebrating. Please don't take that omission too personally, I only posted my Christmas cards yesterday.

It looks like being a bumper Christmas for the many Christian throat clearers, as noted by Ruth Gledhill in her Times blog (hat tip: Liz of Christian Attitudes). They even get their own special Christmas crib (complete with security barrier, but unaccountably lacking any terrorists among its dramatis personae).

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Did you hear the one about the Archbishop, the Muslim and the Good Samaritan?

Better late than never department: that Rowan Williams interview again. The Times report has a 'Read the interview in full' link which actually just gives you the cover of the Muslim magazine which published it. This is the correct link, though it still isn't 'in full', just a fuller version as editorialized for the mag (the link has an impermanent look to it, so catch it while you can).

Actually, I would very much like to read/hear the thing verbatim, since that would allow me to judge how far the Archbish is the innocent victim of a stitch-up by his interviewer.

For Sarah Joseph is, I fear, a distinctly slippery customer. Take her reference to:-

'the Danish legislation that banned its citizens who are under 25 from marrying a foreign national, and other such repressive moves throughout Europe'

Well, I couldn't believe that, so I googled it and came up with this, which, whilst it contains more than enough nonsense, is quite sufficient to convict Ms Joseph of not letting the facts get in the way of a good victim whine. I'd like to know whether the Archbishop, too, smelled a rat, or whether he took her claim at face value.

This is plainly pure editiorializing on Ms Joseph' part:-

'Indeed, Israel’s "security fence" is made up of a triple layer of concrete and metal, equipped with electronic sensors and patrolled by army jeeps, ostensibly to keep out the terrorists, but in effect keeping ordinary civilians caged.'

No quotes, so the Archbishop certainly didn't say it, and I have not quite abandoned the hope that, if she had said it to him, he might not have let that supercilious 'ostensibly' pass. It would be nice to think that he might have queried whether it was meant to imply (a) the absence of a genuine terrorist threat or (b) that physically keeping terrorists out is a wholly ineffective way of preventing them from killing people or (c) that the Israeli government are too depraved to be capable of a sincere concern for the lives of their fellow citizens. Hope, I remind myself, is a theological virtue.

So I also hope that this does not represent the totality of the views he expressed about the security barrier (you see, there's really no need to choose between "wall" and "fence"):-

'He condemns the wall which cuts in half that most special of places where the Christian narrative says Christ was born. "Whatever justification given for the existence of the wall, the human cost is colossal. We saw that for ourselves." He is adamant in calling it a wall and not a fence, "I haven’t seen very many fences of that size and thickness."'

I hope that he also pointed out the not insignificant human cost paid by hundreds of Israeli civilians for not having a barrier, and that this bit was quietly excised by Ms Joseph. That is to say, I hope that he is, at the level of basic moral judgment, fit to be the leader of the Anglican Communion.

I leave others to tackle his effusion of nostalgia for the Raj; this post does the job well, despite the slight whiff of Spartishness, and this one covers the same ground from a different angle. I digress, but a particular worry about Bob from Brockley's post is that a book entitled Late Victorian Holocausts has already committed a cardinal sin on its front cover. There has only been one Holocaust, and the only events which have a claim to be like it are instances of the systematic extermination of an entire ethnic group - to which Imperial Britain's guilt over famines in India, however great, does not amount.


I will just observe that, although the 100% Muslim people of Afghanistan are so far from being misty-eyed about the Raj that they still have mixed feelings about us Brits, a whopping 71% of them are glad to have American troops defending them, and the government which even more (84%) want to see running the country, against the Taliban. Does the Archbishop have any inkling that this is the case? If he does, you wouldn't guess it from the article.

And with that I pass on to one more source of annoyance - this time theological rather than (or as well as) political:-

'I ask him if Christians have become tame. He agrees, "We listen to the most extraordinary and outrageous things in the New Testament and we doze through them." He cites the example of the Samaritans, a people reviled at the time of Christ, but who we now associate with righteous deeds. "To get the full force of the parable of the Good Samaritan we have to use another word: the good asylum seeker, the good Muslim, the good teenager in a hoodie. You have got to get the sense of the unexpected, the despised. That’s what the parable is about."'

So, His Archdruidliness's idea of "extraordinary and outrageous", in the context of a cosy chat with a Muslim journalist, is to raise the suggestion that Muslims are capable of good deeds. Wouldn't it have been just a little more incendiary - if not for Ms Joseph, at least for some of the readers of Emel magazine - to have made the same suggestion about, for instance, gays or Jews?

It's a variation on a trope which one hears regularly from liberal preachers: the congregation are invited to bask in self-congratulation over their inclusiveness towards people they've never particularly felt like excluding. Which is simultaneously an invitation to construct an Other - the racists, the homophobes, the Islamophobes, the nasty, non-inclusive Christians - which becomes the object of actual exclusion.

'And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others: Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican.' (Luke 18:9-11)

In the interview, likewise, there's an Us and a Them being constructed. 'All those people out there who could never imagine a Muslim doing anyone a good turn - thank goodness you and I know better!' Not just comfortable complicity between Rowan and Sarah, but encouragement to her and her readers to feel misunderstood and victimized by the Other - encouragement which (cf. Ms Joseph on Danish marriage law) tends to be superfluous.

The parable is abused here because it is not about Jesus expounding the post-ethical pseudo-ethic of multi-culti political correctness. Note first that he doesn't say that the Samaritans had a great religion that was just as valid as that of the Jews. In John 4:22 we see that, whilst Jesus has no qualms about talking to a Samaritan, he is forthright about the shortcomings of Samaritan religious practice. We need only recall how central the Psalms and Prophets are to Jesus's faith to realize how mutilated a religion which accepted only the Torah as Scripture must have appeared to him.

And the punchline of the parable is not (as reading the ABC might tempt one to suppose) "think respectful and inclusive thoughts about Samaritans". It's "Go, and do thou likewise". That's the bit that's always too radical for us. Much, much easier to think those respectful and inclusive thoughts - and tell ourselves what splendid people we are for doing so.