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".

Quote of the Week

Brought to my attention by him and her:-

'Our society has moved towards, or some might say reverted to, a legislative approach that punishes those who commit crimes not solely on the basis of their actions, but on the reasoning behind those actions and the identity of the victim.'

Too right, mate. It makes a total mockery of the principle of equal justice for all, doesn't it?

Oh no, wait, this is a barrister defending hate crime legislation in the Grauniad. He's telling us about a good thing...

Typo of the month

'Social networking sties means [sic] that animal-rights campaigners can spread their message with touch-of-the-keyboard ease, says Judith Woods.' (here)

I'm all for confining the persons who have been harassing the Koupparis family to sties in which they can network with each other to their hearts' content. Not that I would want them to share their accommodation with pigs - that would be most unfair to those intelligent and pacific animals.

And since you ask, I only eat pork if free-range.

A dangerous moral non-equivalence

Dashing trendy vicar George Pitcher has picked up on the well-worn phrase "moral equivalence", and thinks he has nailed a dodgy one:-

'The British Army represents our parliamentary democracy and defends our freedoms. We are entitled to expect better of it than terrorists. Its actions must be entirely professional and accountable.'

So far so good. It does, we are, they must be. However...

'Furthermore, to kill civilians is more morally reprehensible for our soldiers and degrades their moral integrity to a level lower than the actions of IRA terrorists, because that is what we expect of terrorists – it is not what we expect of the British Army.'

No George, no. That doesn't work. The moral equivalent to murdering innocent civilians is murdering innocent civilians, actually. If by murdering innocent civilians you confirm a prior expectation that you will murder innocent civilians, all that means is that you have acquired your moral infamy by instalments. But the end result is the same.

Maybe not the strongest argument ever against GM food?

...this one from Martin Kelly:-

'Genetically modified food seems to be where the mindset of 'Star Trek' meets
that of 'Old MacDonald Had A Farm', the intensely modern, ultrarational view
that believes technology is the cure for all our ills applied to the most basic,
most ancient of human practices. GM may have some value. However, there may also
be some value in the human race deciding to recite the words 'Give us this day
our daily bread'. It works for me. Which of the two is more likely to lead to
you having bread to eat is one of those many things in life to which we will
never know the answer. We might think we know; but we won't, not really.'

Well, I don't what I'm doing wrong in the prayer department, but, no matter how often I say that one, all the shops round here still expect me to fork out money for the stuff.

Seriously, does Martin have the faintest idea how much he would have to eat if agricultural technology had remained static since the day the prayer was first uttered?

"God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform", says William Cowper's well-loved hymn. Sometimes, though, the mystery is merely mystification of our own making. Sometimes he's just asking "what did I give you lot brains for?".

Left foot forward: Christian Aid and its mistakes

Christian Aid and Israel. There's been enough material for an entire conference just lately - and I reckon it's about time somebody organized one.

What was Christian Aid doing the other day issuing a press release which alleged sexual abuse of Palestinian schoolgirls by Jewish settlers? Answer: it was a mistake. Very sorry.

We all make mistakes, don't we? It's just that sometimes our mistakes say a lot about us. This one speaks volumes about the culture that prevails inside Christian Aid. You don't turn verbal abuse into sexual abuse unless you already have a strong disposition to think the worst of those accused. And this is not the first mistake of its kind.

In February Christian Aid's youth website "Ctrl alt shift" carried - on International Holocaust Remembrance Day - an article by a young fanatic which accused Shimon Peres of being a war criminal and equated the dead of Gaza with those of the Holocaust. As Adam Levick wrote at Comment is Free, "Such ugly charges are typically levelled only in explicitly antisemitic and extremist publications". Whilst there was no mistake on the writer's part, Levick's piece prompted what was apparently an official response from Christian Aid (though it has now strangely disappeared from the comments thread). Said marketing director Matthew Reed:-

'The incident exposed shortcomings in the moderation procedures for the Ctrl Alt Shift website and an urgent review of these procedures is underway.'

Very sorry indeed.

Then, just a few days later, it was the turn of Christian Aid's favourite politician to wipe some egg off her face. Baroness Tonge had, of course, suggested that the allegation that the Israeli Defence Force were in Haiti to harvest organs merited an investigation.

So, so, so sorry.

(at least, she was when called into the boss's office)

Three mistakes, but not three accidents. Put them together and you get an entirely coherent picture of what Jews are like when they get their own state.

• They go to one of the poorest countries on Earth in the wake of a disaster, posing as helpers but in fact on the lookout for body parts to steal.
• They do things which are as bad as herding men, women and children into camps and murdering them with poison gas.
• And, they sexually abuse Gentile children.

Each "mistake" ratchets up the hysteria one more notch, makes it a little easier to look at a Jew and see a monster.

How can anyone even moderately acquainted with the history of anti-Semitism - and specifically the history of Christian anti-Semitism - fail to hear alarm bells ringing?

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?

The lice and the fleas fight over the cadaver of Amnesty International

Martin Bright gives us an extract from Gita Sahgal's latest salvo against her former employers Amnesty International. He's impressed and one can understand why. Of course it is unconscionable that AI has been organizing gigs for an extreme Islamist, and in this matter Ms Sahgal has acted as a model whistleblower.

My own admiration for her is tempered by the fact that her job description at AI was "Head of the Gender Unit", meaning it was very much on her watch that Amnesty declared abortion to be a universal human right, with the corollary that unborn children have no human rights at all.

So this is, after all, no more than a turf war between two factions of leftist ideologues using Amnesty to promote their agendas. For both sides the most fundamental human right of all is negotiable. It was Dr Johnson who said that there is no settling the precedence between a louse and a flea; putting it another way, only if it can be arranged for both sides to lose does Amnesty stand a chance of recovering its original and noble vocation.

A fish called Humbug

"[Lord] David Alton [...] left the Lib Dems when he realised that they cared more about the rights of a goldfish than an unborn child", Cristina Odone recalled the other day.

I am sure there are strict regulations to ensure that no advert on Channel 4 ever promotes goldfish abuse.

I'm reminded of the questionnaire I was sent a couple of years ago by the Co-op Bank, whose customer I am largely as a hangover from past political affiliations. I was invited to tick boxes to indicate which ethical issues moved me. The idea of determining what is ethical by sending out a questionnaire is in itself a diverting one, is it not? David Cameron himself couldn't have done better. But the point on this occasion is that whilst there was a box by which I could have registered a concern that the bank should not invest in fur farming, any reference to the legalized culling of small humans was conspicuous by its absence.

Catching 'em young

'I do continue to make generous donations to Christian Aid via the Inland Revenue. I'd like to think the change of government will lead to some rather more rigorous questions being asked about what it is they do.'

- I wrote last week.

It's looking promising already:-

'Less than a week after becoming international development secretary, Andrew Mitchell began fulfilling his pledge to ensure value for money on aid by cutting development education projects.

'As part of "a drive to re-focus aid spending", Mitchell today announced an immediate funding freeze on five development "awareness projects", a move expected to save the department more than £500,000.

[...]

'The five cancelled projects are £146,000 for a Brazilian-style dance troupe in Hackney, London; £55,000 to run stalls at summer music festivals; £120,000 to train nursery school teachers about 'global issues'; £130,000 for a 'global gardens schools network' and £140,000 to train outdoor education tutors in Britain on development. The money saved will be "redirected to areas where it will have a greater impact on global poverty".'

(Hat tip: Julia M)

Allergy advice: this post may contain traces of schadenfreude. I've nothing against Brazilian-style dancing in Hackney except that it ain't overseas development, so they can jolly well join the arts funding queue like everyone else. But it's the nursery school teachers bit that's the dead giveaway, isn't it?

Andrew Mitchell is stressing the value for money angle, but he won't need telling that there's more to it than that. This is fat-trimming in the fullest sense, not just excess pounds we're lugging around but stuff that's positively bad for us. It's about the development business not only telling us how to think but doing it with our cash - cash that it can more or less help itself to because it's doled out by tame civil servants who already think all the right thoughts because they've been parachuted in from the development business. It's grown into a very cosy arrangement over the last thirteen years, and it's an arrogant, fundamentally undemocratic abuse of power.

And when the indoctrination starts in nursery school... what's not to like, as they say, about Mr Mitchell and his new broom? A word to the wise: I wouldn't count on him being a huge fan of Friends of Sabeel UK.