“The problem with the Jews is that they have a state that behaves badly?”

Shuggy takes on Ben White, the Anglican commentator who does not consider himself to be an antisemite, yet understands why some are, due partly to the behaviour of the state of Israel.

Shuggy writes:

Instead I’d say this: the answer to Ben White’s question is of course it’s possible to ‘understand’ anti-Semitism – intellectually rather than empathetically – but it helps if you aren’t a complete ignoramus. Here I’m thinking those of us who are rather concerned about this issue should rely less on the techniques of literary criticism and semantics. Because there is evidence, both historical and contemporary, that can be brought to bear here.

How do we know that contemporary anti-Semitism cannot be reduced to the behaviour of the state of Israel? One reason is simply because it predated it – the themes, the narrative, the material – by some time. Even White feels obliged to acknowledge this…

Read on.

Quakers are true to their principles

Quakers reject violence.

Social justice?

The theology of extreme Christian Zionism is concerning to many Christians in the West who believe that some pro-Israel Christians are focusing more on politics than on individual people. Other Christians oppose Christian Zionism because some Christian Zionists are obsessive about end-times prophecies and premillennial dispensationalism (this ignores the fact that many Reformed Baptists, evangelicals and Protestants support Israel without having dispensationalist theology).

In attempting to approach the issue in a different way, many Christians such as Colin Chapman, Gary Burge, John Hubers and Stephen Sizer have challenged Christian Zionist theology and politics in an attempt to, in their view, redress the balance. These theologians see Christian Zionists as obsessed with Armageddon and insensitive to Arab Christians, and thus they attempt to prove themselves different by focusing on present issues in the Middle East rather than future prophecy, and claim to sympathise with Christian Arabs and Palestinians. In attempting to express support for the Palestinians, many of these Christians enthusiastically take up anti-Israel politics, and align their worldview on Palestine with ideas common in Muslim majority countries. Thus, opposition to Christian Zionism becomes opposition to Zionism itself. These Christians not only oppose premillennial dispensationalist eschatology, but also the Jewish right for self-determination.

These Christians thus speak about Christian ‘social justice’, and use ideas from the school of liberation theology. Liberation theology was a Latin American-based movement that sought to link Christianity with Marxism. The ‘poor of Christ’ whom Jesus spoke to in the Beatitudes were the oppressed peasants of Latin America, whilst the corrupt Pharisees were represented by American imperialism and corrupt Latin American dictatorships. Palestinian liberation theology, as developed by Naim Ateek, is a different concept. In Palestinian liberation theology, Jesus does not take sides between the rich and the poor, or between the ruling classes and the working classes/peasants, but between people of one nation and another. Jesus becomes a Palestinian, oppressed by Israelis. Here is an example of Palestinian liberation theology espoused by Naim Ateek, who enjoys great support amongst Christian anti-Zionists:

“It seems to many of us that Jesus is on the cross again with thousands of crucified Palestinians around him…. Palestinian men, women, and children being crucified. Palestine has become one huge golgotha. The Israeli government crucifixion system is operating daily. Palestine has become the place of the skull.” (Ateek, Easter Message, April 6, 2001)

According to Ateek’s twisting of Biblical themes, Israel operates a crucifixion system, and the Palestinians become linked with Jesus’ death. Such powerful imagery is designed to cast the Palestinians in the minds of Christians as like Jesus without fault, and the Israelis as particularly sinful. So although they accuse the Christian Zionists of oversimplifying the Middle East by supporting Israel over Palestine, we see how many Christian anti-Zionists crassly oversimplify the Middle East conflict by whitewashing Palestinian crimes and demonising Israel.

Whilst many pro-Palestinian Christians claim to be supporting Palestinian Christians, there is more to this claim than meets the eye. The suffering of Palestinian Christians is often blamed exclusively on Israel, despite evidence of persecution against Palestinian Christians by the PLO, Fatah, Hamas, and other Islamist movements. (In extreme cases, Christian anti-Zionists acted as apologists for Iran and its proxies Hamas and Hezbollah – see here for more details). However, many Palestinian Christians cannot publicly speak out against Palestinian authorities for fear of reprisal, whilst they are encouraged by the same authorities to speak out against Israel as Christians.

Whilst many high profile Christian anti-Zionists claim to be interested in social justice, many have a tendency just to see Israelis as wrongdoers, or to focus on Israeli wrongdoings. Some Christian anti-Zionists blame Israel for most if not all of the problems in the Middle East, and don’t treat Zionism as a nationalist movement, but as an attempt at a land grab, presenting Jewish nationalists (Zionists) as thieves of Palestine, motivated by their religious beliefs about holy land. But seeing Zionism as merely motivated by religion fails to take into account that the Zionist movement was pioneered by secular Jews with secular beliefs, for whom Palestine was the appropriate and natural place for the establishment for a Jewish homeland due to the Jewish people’s historic ties with the land of Israel.

In this way of thinking, with Israel cast as essentially the root cause of all problems in the Middle East, if there were no Israel then there would be no anti-Zionism [similar to the logic that claims if there were no Jews then no anti-Semitism, no children then no paedophilia, no women then no rape etc].

Christian anti-Zionists support this narrative through select passages in the Old Testament which warn of a Jewish exile from Israel, and an interpretation of the New Testament which excludes the Jews from having any national identity. However, whilst high profile Christian anti-Zionists like Stephen Sizer think Jewish nationalism is illegitimate, they strongly support Palestinian nationalism. Yet if Christians are to deny Jews the right to a national homeland, then all nationalism should be condemned. Christian anti-Zionists are at a loss to explain why it is only Jewish nationalism that must be opposed and analysed.

As a result of both an unexplained focus on Israel, a theology which denies Jews the right to a homeland, and a lack of sympathy for Israeli concerns, many people accuse scholars like Stephen Sizer and Colin Chapman of antisemitism. There is also an element of conspiracy theory amongst leading Christian anti-Zionists. Colin Chapman claims that Jews in America have power ‘out of all proportion’ to their numbers, whilst Stephen Sizer has blamed Israelis for taking part in 9/11. Sizer himself has even spoken at a conference alongside Holocaust denier Fred Tobin.

One of the most popular experts on Christian social justice is Brian McLaren, who appears to support Ben White’s call for a boycott against Israel and Israelis. The boycott call is not just a boycott of the Jewish state but of individual Jewish Israelis. Thus, in the name of social justice and Christianity, Bryan McLaren advocates the exclusion of Israelis from global affairs. This attitude however is not confined to the realms of theology, but finds its out-workings in the anti-Zionist campaigns of the Friends of Sabeel, Diakonia, Amos Trust and War on Want, as well as plenty other Christian charities, in the name of social justice.

Friends of Sabeel, whilst using Christian language, is often supported by suspicious characters, and its international patron Desmond Tutu promotes paranoid, antisemitic conspiracy theories about a powerful Jewish lobby in America. Diakonia, the Swedish charity which represents five Swedish Christian denominations, is closely linked with Sabeel. Whilst Sabeel claim to love Israel, many of their members support racist boycotts against Israel. And, whilst Diakonia claim to be interested in Christian social justice, Diakonia’s own policy officer has admitted that the charity is “more a lobby group with a clear political agenda for the Middle East than a Christian aid organisation.” Similarly, Christian Aid has for years attacked Israel; in fact there is a whole blog set up watching Christian Aid for antisemitism.

Christian Aid’s patron Jenny Tonge had to step down from her post when she said she sympathised with suicide bombers. Tonge is now a patron of Friends of Sabeel UK, as are two bishops heavily involved with Christian Aid. The former director of World Vision, Tom Getman, has praised Hezbollah’s political leader Hassan Nasrallah and its spiritual leader Sheikh Fadlallah for their insights and criticisms of Christianity. Oxfam ran a poster campaign in Belgium urging people not to buy Israeli fruit, and showed a picture of an Israeli Jaffa orange dripping with blood, for which Oxfam later apologised.

Yet true social justice surely sees neither Israelis nor Palestinians, but human beings. So boycott campaigns which will exclude one group to purportedly support the other cannot themselves be socially ‘just’. Through a claim to be practising social justice, some Christians end up developing racist and antisemitic non-Christian ways of thinking. Such Christians may not recognise this, but until they do, their words about social justice will be very hard to take seriously.

Christians should, surely, encourage harmony between people in Israel and the Palestinian territories, emphasising what they have in common and encouraging reconciliation and dialogue. Instead, by dividing people into good (Palestinians) and bad (Israelis), Christian anti-Zionists merely construct barriers between people, rather than tearing down barriers as they would like to imagine themselves as doing.

Ben White, Israel and South Africa: Apartheid analogies

Lucy Lips writes:

Understanding” is a weasel word, isn’t it.

What would you think if I were to say:

“I don’t hate black people but I understand why some people do”/

Imagine that I then went on to argue that racism against black people was exacerbated by those who argue that the obsessive focus on the supposed criminality of some black people is motivated by racism.

Suppose that I then claim that black identity politics is the worst form of racism in the world, that states run by black people are the more atriocious than anywhere else in the world, and that it is a media conspiracy and European guilt over racism and slavery that prevents us saying so.

What would you think of me?

White racists often do run arguments just like this. They will frequently deny that they’re racists, and will argue that if only people would listen to them and act on their advice, there wouldn’t be so much racism. It isn’t a new rhetorical technque, but it is a transparent one.

That’s basically Ben White’s line too. He argues:

I do not consider myself an anti-Semite, yet I can also understand why some are. There are, in fact, a number of reasons. One is the state of Israel, its ideology of racial supremacy and its subsequent crimes committed against the Palestinians. It is because Zionists have always sought to equate their colonial project with Judaism that some misguidedly respond to what they see on their televisions with attacks on Jews or Jewish property.

Secondly, and related to the first point, is the widespread bias and subservience to the Israeli cause in the Western media…

I have just provided a by no means comprehensive list of reasons why “I can understand very well that some people are unpleasant towards Jews.” I do not agree with them, but I can understand.

… and so on.

There is a difference between truly attempting to understand why people are nasty racists, and providing an alibi for racists. Ben White is in the business of providing alibis for racists. His argument is essentially “Zionists have tricked racists into hating Jews, generally”. Poor racists.

No progressive ever makes excuses for racists.

Ben White can only get away with this in a context in which a sizeable proportion of self-described liberal opinion holds that the State of Israel is the most significant source of evil in the world. It is, in fact, the hysterical and hyperbolic response to any Israel-related issue among that section of progressive opinion that is a substantial cause of contemporary antisemitism.

Here’s an example. Ben White has a column up on Liberal Conspiracy, pushing his Israel = South Africa crap. This is, apparently, a good liberal view because, of course, Israel is a pernicious colonial settler state that all right thinking people should oppose.

Here’s another example. The charity War on Want is hosting Ben White on Thursday 9 July at the Conway Hall.

There is a substantial section of the British Left which thinks that it is liberal and progressive to claim that racism is best understood as an “understandable” reaction to whatever it is the target of racism is supposed to be guilty of. You can say this, where Jews are concerned, and nobody will bat an eyelid.

Now, the next time Ben White writes an article comparing his views on Israel and South Africa, he might want to start it like this:

“I do not consider myself a supporter of South African apartheid, but I can understand those who were; similarly I do not consider myself an antisemite, but I can understand those who are.”

THAT kind of analogy doesn’t help his case at all!

Robert West wants the BNP to pray for the clergy

Watch Robert West encouraging the BNP to pray for English clergymen here.

Billy Graham and the Jews

Listen here to Graham and Nixon’s conversation. Graham has, however, apologised for making antisemitic remarks, rather than attempting to explain or deny them.

More on Iason Athanasiadis

The Times reports:

Family of British-Greek journalist plea for Iran release

The parents of a British-Greek journalist detained in Iran appealed for his release today insisting that their son was not a spy.

Iason Athanasiadis, also known as Jason Fowden, was arrested at Imam Khomeini Airport in Tehran at the end of last week on charges of “underground activities”. He had been about to fly out of the country after covering the election and its violent aftermath for The Washington Times.

Mr Fowden is the latest victim of a state-ordered media blackout that has seen dozens of journalists taken into custody and many more expelled.

Iran’s state news agency quoted a Culture Ministry official as saying: “I call on foreign reporters to work within our laws when travelling to Iran for news coverage… because if they act against national security and spy, they will be arrested by security institutions and handed over to the judiciary.”

But Mr Fowden’s Greek mother, Polymnia Athanasiadi, and British father, Georgios Fowden, said in a statement yesterday that their son had “always maintained his integrity as an independent journalist”.

They added: “His work serves no purpose other than the fair and humane coverage of life in the many countries where he has worked.”

Mr Fowden has covered Iran since 2004 and has contributed articles and photographs to The Guardian, the Financial Times, the Daily Telegraph, and GlobalPost.

In an article published on The Guardian website on June 16, Mr Fowden described a “city literally divided” as supporters of incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his defeated challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi faced off. His last article, a profile of Mousavi, ran in The Washington Times one day later.

Read more.

Free Iason Athansiadis

Nieman Foundation calls for release of journalist detained in Iran

Iason Athanasiadis, our friend and colleague from the Nieman Class of 2008, has been arrested and is being detained by the Iranian government. Iason, a Greek citizen, was in Iran to report on the June 12 presidential election. He was traveling with a valid journalist’s visa and credentials when he was picked up by Iranian officials at the Tehran airport last Wednesday evening. Iranian news agencies have reported his detention, although no precise charges have been presented.

“The Nieman Foundation and members of the Nieman community around the world are supportive of the Greek diplomatic initiatives to secure Iason’s safe and immediate release,” said Nieman Curator Bob Giles. “His dispatches from Iran are the work of a professional journalist who cares deeply about the Iranian people, for whom he has developed a deep affection during his years of reporting there.”

Iason, who grew up in Athens as the son of university professors, developed a familiarity with Iran during three years there as both a journalist and student. He filed stories for a range of publications including the Financial Times, Al-Ahram Weekly, The Daily Star in Lebanon and Al Jazeera. During that period, he earned a master’s degree with a concentration in Persian and Contemporary Asian Studies at the School of International Relations in Tehran.

Iason once recalled the Persian saying that “knowing another language is tantamount to possessing another culture.” He said he recognized the difference in his coverage of the region after achieving fluency in Farsi and freeing himself from dependence on a translator.

During his Nieman year, Iason amazed his classmates with his energetic pursuit of courses throughout Harvard and his willingness to serve on panels and fulfill speaking invitations, often to talk about Iran. His op-ed pieces and occasional freelance assignments seemed to materialize effortlessly. He also created an exhibit of his work as a photojournalist. Leading teachers and thinkers at Harvard were drawn to him as a fair-minded and knowledgeable source of information about Iran.

During his recent reporting visit to Iran, he filed stories for The Washington Times, GlobalPost and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

The Nieman Foundation and Nieman Fellows in many parts of the world are asking news organizations to work through diplomatic channels in an effort to secure his release. Iason’s family has requested help from the Greek Foreign Minister and the Greek Ambassador to Iran.

Iason is among at least 40 journalists and bloggers who have been detained by the Iranian government since the contested election took place earlier this month.

Galloway: Khamenei’s British Mouthpiece

Here.

Brian McLaren’s generous Orthodoxy doesn’t extend to Israelis

Brian McLaren is a popular contemporary Christian leader. Back in January, in a post about Gaza, McLaren wrote:

My friend Hannah Mermelstein works for justice and peace. She is a woman of Jewish descent who believes in doing justice and loving kindness for everyone, without distinctions based on religion or nationality.

Does she now?

Hannah Mermelstein runs Birthright Unplugged, designed as a counter to the Birthright Israel programme. Mermelstein is an outspoken champion of the BDS movement which seeks to exclude Israelis from cultural and academic life on the basis of where they were born. The fact that McLaren considers her as someone who ‘who believes in doing justice and loving kindness for everyone, without distinctions based on religion or nationality’ is pretty worrying, considering she advocates excluding people based upon their place of birth.

McLaren’s endorsement of anti-Israel boycotters (which I also blogged here) chimes strangely with his self-professed tolerance of all people from all nations. McLaren has written a book explaining how his ‘generous orthodoxy’ makes him variously a Catholic, a Protestant, an Anglican, a liberal, a conservative, a mystic, a green, an evangelical, and, er, a depressive. McLaren writes in Generous Orthodoxy:

“Because I follow Jesus, then, I am bound to Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, agnostics, atheists, New Agers, everyone (even religious broadcasters, I was just reminded by a still small voice). Not only am I bound to them in love, but I am also actually called to, in some real sense (please don’t minimize this before you qualify it), become one of them and be with them in it.”

Great! So Brian, if you can find it in your generous heart to empathise with people from all nations, cultures and religions, why not extend your generous Orthodoxy to Israelis too, lest people be suspicious of the consistency of your arguments!