GayandRight

My name is Fred and I am a gay conservative living in Ottawa. This blog supports limited government, the right of the State of Israel to live in peace and security, and tries to expose the threat to us all from cultural relativism, post-modernism, and radical Islam. I am also the founder of the Free Thinking Film Society in Ottawa (www.freethinkingfilms.com)

Tuesday, July 05, 2011

The Churches against Israel...

This is discouraging...
The World Council of Churches, an ecumenical Christian body based in Genève and boasting 590 million worshippers, just ended a four-day conference in the Greek city of Volos. Not a single word of criticism was uttered there against the Islamists who are persecuting Arabs who believe Jesus.

Lutherans arrived to Volos from the United States, Catholics and Protestants from Bethlehem and Nazareth, Orthodox Christians from Greece and Russia, lecturers from Beirut and Copts from Egypt. The conference declared the Jewish State "a sin" and "occupying power," accused Israelis of "dehumanizing" the Palestinians, theologically dismantled the "choseness" of the Jewish people and called for "resistance" as a Christian duty.

The conference denied 3,000 years of Jewish life in the land stretching between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River, took sides against the very presence of Israel, likened the defensive barrier that has blocked terrorism to "apartheid," attacked Jewish homes in Judea and Samaria invoking the name of God and conceptually dismissed the Jewish state, imagining it to be a mixture - Islamic, Christian and perhaps a bit Jewish. It even legitimized terrorism when it talked about the "thousands of prisoners who languish in Israeli jails," proclaiming that "resistance to the evil of occupation is a Christian's right and duty."

Copying Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric

In the last few months we have seen a radical and dangerous increase of attacks on Israel by the Protestant and Catholic churches. While the US is home to many Christian supporters of Israel, the groups more closely linked to global public opinion, European bureaucracy, the media industry, the United Nations and various legal forums are all violently anti-Israel and anti-Jewish. They are paving the way for a new Jewish bloodbath by the theological exclusion of Israel's Jews from the family of nations.

The patriarch of the Antioch Church, the Catholic Melkite Gregory III Laham, proclaimed that there is a "Zionist conspiracy against Islam," reviving old conspiracy theories that led to infamous pogroms. In Antwerp, once called "the Belgian Jerusalem," a highly respected and government-funded Catholic school, the College of the Sacred Heart, just hosted a "Palestine Day" replete with anti-Semitic references and activities for youngsters. One stall at the event was titled "Throw the soldiers into the sea," allowing children to throw replicas of Jewish and Israeli soldiers into two large tanks.

The most influential international Catholic peace movement, Pax Christi, just promoted a boycott of Israel's goods "in the name of love." The most hated Israeli product includes Ahava, the famous Israeli cosmetics company, whose shop in Covent Garden, London, has just been closed by the company after years of demonstrations. Strangely, Ahava body lotion tubes have been chosen as a satanic symbol of Jewish colonialism.

Today, most of the divestment campaign against Israel is driven by Christian groups such as the Dutch Interchurch Organization and the Irish Catholic group Troicaré, both funded by the EU. The United Church of Canada, a very popular and mainstream Christian denomination, just voted to boycott six companies (Caterpillar, Motorola, Ahava, Veolia, Elbit Systems and Chapters/Indigo) and South African bishop Desmond Tutu convinced the University of Johannesburg to severe all its links with Israeli fellows.

Last year the Methodist Church of Britain voted to boycott Israeli-produced goods and services from Judea and Samaria. The catholic Pax Christi is also leading the campaign glorifying Mordechai Vanunu, Israel's nuclear whistleblower who had converted to Christianity.

La Civiltà Cattolica, the Vatican magazine reviewed by the Holy See secretary of state before publication, in January opened with a shocking editorial on Palestinian refugees. Adopting the Islamist propagandist word "Nakba," just recently invoked by Arab mobs to breach Israel's borders, the paper declared that the refugees are a consequence of "ethnic cleansing" by Israel and that "the Zionists were cleverly able to exploit the Western sense of guilt for the Shoah to lay the foundations of their own state." Indeed, Ahmadinejad's rhetoric is alarmingly similar.

6 Comments:

Blogger Darren said...

There is something that doesn't sound right about this article. I am not saying that the author got it wrong, but the overwhelming support by such a variety of churches doesn't seem to ring true. As for the Catholics it runs contrary to the Pope's message and evangelical churches are usually quite supportive of Israeli policy even if it is sometimes motivated by an apocalyptic lens. Maybe it is the EU connection which seems very anti-Semitic.

10:03 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

ecumenical and Christian should not be used in the same sentence. i would say that anti-semitic and Christian also don't go together.

1:03 PM  
Anonymous Alain said...

Darren you have a point, but one fact remains clear. The silence of all the major churches concerning the persecution of Christians of all denominations in Muslim countries cannot pass unnoticed. It is like western feminists ignoring the plight of Muslim women or gays doing the same concerning gays in Muslim countries. All of them turn a blind eye to truth and do everything possible to demonise Israel, which in reality means Jews, and that is a major problem.

1:21 PM  
Anonymous Honey Pot said...

You must remember when the pope made the true statement about how the notiion of islam only came into being because of the sword, how crazy the muslims got. The pope was told to tone it down. I see Christians and Jews on the same ball team when it comes to islam. Pope calls up his army and it will be good-bye Moe.

4:26 PM  
Anonymous MLZC said...

I'm a fundamentalist Christian, and the overwhelming vast majority of *professing* Christendom is of the kind based on anti-Judaic replacement theology that bears such bad fruit. Shame that the anti-Israel interfaith & ecumenical movements (including that from the right -- ex, Glenn Beck) is not appreciated for the degree of threat that it poses. Thanks for blogging this.

10:23 PM  
Anonymous philip said...

Thanks for your blog. Just like at so many points in history (the last being less than 70 years ago)the insane inversion of morality has led to Jews being villians instead of heroes.

1:34 PM  

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