The United Church of Canada really does hate Israel
What other conclusion can one draw from the cockamamie responses in this interview:
Q&A: Why United Church activists are targeting Israel:
Q Your task force has 15 members and you say that the boycott expresses the will of the 60 congregations in your church region. How do you know it reflects the views of those 7,000 members in those congregations?
A A corporation doesn’t have all its policies approved by all their shareholders, do they? We did not go to every single individual and every single congregation, but we’re a body of the United Church that has the authority to make these decisions and we did that.
Q Has the national church endorsed what you’re doing?
A The national church has not endorsed this campaign, but it hasn’t unendorsed it either.
Q What other countries are you targetting for boycotts?
A We’re active in a whole bunch of issues.
Q But what other boycotts have you called for?
A Oh, boycotts. Well, not necessarily boycotts at this point. But this is a long entrenched problem and boycotts have been called for against Israel by civil society in many other countries.
Q But I am wondering what other boycotts your group has called for or been involved with.
A We have participated in other boycott campaigns. In South Africa we participated during the era of apartheid.
Q That was a while ago. What oppressive regimes have you called for boycotts against since then? There are many oppressive regimes in Africa and the Middle East. Or what about communist China?
A No, we have not.
Q So why a boycott of Israel?
A Number one, because Israel purports to be a democracy. Number two, they are in violation of international law and even the UN has tried to call Israel to account. So what is left for people who want to see international law enforced? Libya just happened and the U.S. jumped to take on the presumed responsibility to protect civilians; they jumped in with all kinds of force. But they won’t do that against Israel ever because Israel purports to be a democracy.
Q You say five of the companies extract minerals from occupied land or exploit labour or is a supporter of the IDF. Does Indigo make books in Israel?
A Chapters Indigo owners [Heather] Reisman and [Gerald] Schwartz founded the HESEG foundation, which provides scholarships and other support to “lone soldiers” who have been in the Israeli military. [Lone soldiers are Jews who leave their home countries to join the Israeli army. They have no family in Israel, but often want to stay once their military service is done.]
Q Why would you boycott the company then? This is not the company doing this, but a couple as private citizens.
A I don’t know what to say to you. It’s not a purely private interest. They use the profits from their ownership from this huge company. They are supporting the occupation. This was the only way we could bring the light of day to how the profits of this company support this foundation.
Q Are you concerned that people think you’re fixated on Israel?
A This is not our only effort. We do anti-poverty work, we’ve lobbied about aboriginal rights and environmental issues.
Q But to be clear, you don’t target other countries.
A No.
Gaza rocket barrage hits Israel
From here:
Palestinian militants in Gaza have fired dozens of missiles into southern Israel in what appears to be their heaviest such barrage in two years.
About 50 mortars were fired – two Israelis were hurt, Israel says.
Israeli tanks later shelled targets in the coastal strip, wounding at least five people, Palestinian officials say.
The Islamist group Hamas, which runs Gaza, said it fired some of the mortars. Three days ago an Israeli air strike killed two of its members.
The BBC’s Jon Donnison in Gaza says this seems to be an escalation – both in terms of the number of rockets fired from Gaza and the fact that Hamas said it was responsible.
Hamas’s military wing said it launched dozens of rockets, our correspondent reports.
There were immediate statements condemning Hamas from the Right Reverend Suheil Dawani, Anglican bishop of Jerusalem, Fred Hiltz, Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada and Katharine Jefferts-Schori, Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church.
Sorry, no there weren’t; I must have dozed off and been dreaming.
Celebrating Israeli apartheid week
Well, I’m not, but for those who are, read this:
Police suspect armed terrorist entered house in West Bank and stabbed couple along with 3 children; 2 other children escape unharmed.
Five family members were found murdered in their residence in the West Bank Itamar settlement Friday overnight, after a suspected terrorist broke and entered the house and stabbed the five to death. Two children managed to escape and survived the attack, Army Radio reported.
A Magen David Adom team that arrived at the scene at 1:00 a.m. announced a couple, their 11-year old child, 3-year-old toddler, and a one-month baby girl dead from stabbing wounds.
Other than the devil himself, I have no idea what could possess a person to stab 11 and 3 year old children: for those of you who do happen to support Israeli apartheid week, it’s time to reboot your brains.
Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem denied permit to remain in Israel
Bishop Dawani is being accused off colluding with the Palestinian Authority in shady land dealings. Whether this is true or not remains to be seen but, considering the strident anti-Israel bias of the Western Anglican Church, I’m surprised he had a visa in the first place.
From here:
Bishop Dawani, his wife and daughters had successfully renewed this permit, as required, in 2008 and 2009. On 24 August 2010, Bishop Dawani went to renew the permit with the Ministry of the Interior and was informed in writing that permits for himself, his wife and daughter would not be renewed because of allegations pending against the Bishop. The letter, in Hebrew, included the following: “Bishop Suheil acted with the Palestinian Authority in transferring lands owned by Jewish people to the Palestinians and also helped to register lands of Jewish people in the name of the Church.” There were further allegations that documents were forged by the Bishop. The letter also stated that Bishop Dawani and his family should leave the country immediately.
The Jerusalem Inter-Church Center secretary, Yusef Daher, thinks that Israel doesn’t respect Christians – an odd perspective, considering Israel is the most religiously tolerant nation in the Middle East and is surrounded by rabidly anti-Christian nations who routinely murder Christians. What Daher really means is that Israel has little use for politically motivated pro-Palestinian Anglican prelates whose main contribution to the Israeli people is to criticise them.
“There is a feeling among church leaders that Israel has no respect for Christians or Christian leaders,” Daher said Tuesday (March 1). “There is no respect for the request of the issuing of residency visas.”
UNESCO classifies Rachel’s Tomb as a mosque
From here:
Government responds sharply to cultural body’s request that Israel remove Rachel’s Tomb and Cave of the Patriarchs from list of national heritage sites; Netanyahu calls decision “absurd.”
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Friday slammed world culture organization UNESCO’s decision to characterize the site of Rachel’s Tomb as a Muslim mosque.
“The attempt to separate the nation of Israel from its cultural heritage is absurd,” said the prime minister.
A statement issued by the Prime Minister’s Office read, “It is unfortunate that an organization that was established with the goal of promoting the cultural preservation of historical sites around the world, is attempting due to political reasons to uproot the connection between the nation of Israel and its cultural heritage.”
Whatever next?
The Vatican does a spot of recreational Israel bashing
And sides with that most demonically corrupt organisation, the United Nations, while ignoring the routine persecution of Christians in just about every Middle-Eastern country other than Israel.
All of which goes to show that the Catholic Church is no less susceptible to foam-flecked lunatic leftist fantasies than its Anglican cousin.
From here:
Bishops demand that Israel accept UN resolutions calling for an end to “occupation” of Arab lands; Pope calls for religious freedom.
Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon slammed the Vatican synod after bishops called for an end to the “occupation,” in a statement released on Sunday.
In a communiqué issued Saturday, at the end-of a two-week conference to discuss the future of Christians in the Middle East, the bishops demanded that Israel accept UN resolutions calling for an end to its “occupation” of Arab lands, and told Israel it should not use the Bible to justify “injustices” against the Palestinians.
Meanwhile, the Pope, Cardinals and Bishops continue to occupy Italian land in the enclave known as the Vatican City State. It even has a wall around it, forcing visitors to go through humiliating checkpoints before they enter the occupied territory.
Jimmy Carter: anti-Israel buffoon
From here:
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, 86, has spent the past week in the Middle East, along with a delegation of peace activists known as The Elders, which is led by former Irish President Mary Robinson and former U.N. Envoy Lakhdar Brahimi.
Carter continued to publicly call on Israel to lift the international blockade on the Gaza Strip’s 1.5 million Palestinians.
On Tuesday, while in Syria, he said that Palestinians were “living in a cage” in Gaza.
Excerpted from here.
With Sizer on our side
From here:
“With God on Our Side,” the new anti-Israel movie produced by an evangelical pastor and aimed at evangelical audiences, is touring America this month, with anti-Israel British Anglican priest Stephen Sizer in tow. On October 27, it was originally going to be screened in the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center, doubtless hoping to appeal to young evangelical Congressional staffers, whose numbers and influence likely will increase in the new Congress. Now, for whatever reason, it instead will screen at a Lutheran church on Capitol Hill.
The Evangelical Left is anxious to neutralize evangelicals as America’s typically most pro-Israel demographic, especially by focusing on the plight of Palestinian Christians, who are portrayed as victims exclusively of Israeli oppression. “With God on Our Side,” predictably, portrays pro-Israel Christians as mindless zealots indifferent to Palestinian suffering and exploiting Israeli Jews as merely tools for precipitating the Second Coming. Hapless quotes from Christian Zionists are contrasted with thoughtful articulations from Palestinian Christians and other pro-Palestinian advocates.
Anglican priest Stephen Sizer, prominently featured in the film, bewails Christian Zionism on his website: “Aspects of this belief system lead some Christians in the West to give uncritical support to Israeli government policies, even those that privilege Jews at the expense of Palestinians, leading to great suffering among Muslim and Christian Palestinians alike and threatening Israel’s security as a whole.”
Rev. Stephen Sizer is upset with evangelical Christians who support Israel based on what he calls Christian Zionism, a belief that the Jews’ return to the Holy Land and the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 is in accordance with Biblical prophecy. I don’t find that idea unpersuasive; I do find Stephen Sizer’s crusade against it lacking in honesty. It seems to me that he is engaged in political agitation thinly concealed by a veil of religious sanctimony.
While Israel isn’t perfect, there are plenty of political reasons to support it, the main one being that it is an oasis of democracy in a desert of vicious tyrannies.
Terrorists fired phosphorus shells into Israel
From the Jerusalem Post:
At least 2 of the 9 mortar shells fired during the day contained phosphorus, police confirm; regional council head intends to inform UN of Geneva Convention violation.
Two phosphorous mortars were fired at southern Israel from Gaza on Wednesday, Police Spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told The Jerusalem Post.
“A police bomb disposal team examined a number of mortars that were fired today. We can confirm that two out of the nine mortars contained phosphorous,” Rosenfeld added.
Israel Police said it was not the first time that phosphorous shells had been fired at Israel from Gaza.
Imagine the wailing and gnashing of teeth we would have heard from the Guardian and other repositories of leftist agitprop – not to mention bombastic pieties from the WCC, NCC, Fred Hiltz and Shirley McClaine – had it been the other way around.
As of the time of writing this post, though, the media are ignoring it.
More predictable World Council of Churches anti-Israel bias
From here:
“Politicians need to act and prevent this human tragedy,” WCC general secretary, the Rev. Olav Fykse Tveit, told ENInews after a visit to Palestinian families who have been evicted by Israelis from their homes in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheik Jarrah.
On the fourth day of his six-day visit to the Holy Land, Tveit noted that meeting with the family members from about 12 families evicted from their homes in the past two years greatly affected his understanding of infringements of Palestinian rights which are taking place.
Notable by its absence is Rev. Tveit’s meeting with Jewish families whose rights have been “infringed’ by the 16000 rockets fired into Israel from Palestinian occupied territories. Perhaps that would have “greatly affected his understanding”, too, although I suspect not since, as all good WCC members know, everything from 9/11 to my next door neighbour’s ingrown toenail is Israel’s fault.
I wonder how many rockets fired into the WCC headquarters in Geneva it would take to “greatly affect” Rev. Olav Fykse Tveit’s understanding?
Meanwhile Tviet has “condemned” the murder of four Israeli civilians while surreptitiously shifting the blame on to them:
The head of the World Council of Churches, who is on a visit to the Middle East, has condemned the killings of four Israelis near Hebron in the West Bank.
“At a time when Palestinian and Israeli leaders are beginning negotiations, the extremists who encourage and legitimize violence must not be allowed to succeed,” said WCC general secretary the Rev. Olav Fykse Tveit in a Sept. 1 statement issued from the church grouping’s Geneva headquarters.
“To bring security to both Israelis and Palestinians, the negotiations must stop the occupation and all the injustices that ordinary Palestinians experience each day,” said Tveit in the statement that said he rejected any use of violence to gain peace for this region.
The four Israelis, who were reportedly settlers living on occupied land and included a pregnant woman, were killed on Aug. 31 by gunmen believed to be Palestinians. Tveit had visited Hebron as part of his Aug. 28 to Sept. 2 visit to the region.
Naturally, Hamas, who are entirely blameless, are dancing in the streets with their children to celebrate. All a bit of harmless fun as far as Tviet is concerned:
