Rev Stephen Sizer has replied to Melanie Phillips’ most recent article in the Spectator by writing:
For starters, I have never said that I wish Israel, to use her words, “will disappear just as did the apartheid regime in South Africa.” I have never believed this and categorically reject any position that threatens the integrity of Israel as a sovereign nation.
Yet evidence suggests that Rev Sizer is not so quick to distance himself from such positions as he claims on his blog.
Have a look at these photos:
In May 2008, Rev Stephen Sizer attended the Voice of Palestine (VOP) Nakba conference in Jakarta, Indonesia, to coincide with celebrations of Israel’s sixtieth birthday. You can read the aims of the VOP conference here, see the conference programme here, and read a report of the conference by Holocaust-denier and VOP guest Fred Tobin here. At the conference, participants declared as one of their four objectives:
To promote one-state solution through the referendum by the native Palestinians regardless of their race, ethnic, sect, and religion.
Here are some photos you can see on the VOP website:
Now, watch this Voice of Palestine video closely:
At the end of the video, you will see that Voice of Palestine is sponsored by the NEDA Institute of Iran, also famed for its courting of Holocaust deniers. Rev Stephen Sizer was a guest of NEDA in Iran back in 2007, as I have already blogged about.
Have a read of Sizer’s blog entry on his time in Indonesia. Here Sizer proudly links to the Jakarta Post, which carries a piece entitled ‘Stop Jewish Colonisation: Seminar’ in which Rev Sizer is heavily quoted.
Furthermore, Rev Sizer has elsewhere been quoted by friends as explaining how he realised that ‘Palestine needed to be liberated from the Jews.’
Now, Rev Sizer, surely adopting a position which calls for Palestine to be free of Jews and Zionists threatens the integrity of Israel as a sovereign nation, wouldn’t you say?
Seismic Shock 
Stephen Sizer HAS stated his desire for Israel to disappear, on his trip to Iran:
http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/071023/2007102301.html
‘Asked to comment on the United Nations requirement to repatriate the “Palestinian refugees to their homeland, he said that repatriation of Palestinians to their own territory will be effective in retaking their own country, because, when the Palestinian refugees come to their home, they will form majority of the population and would form a multi-ethnic state including Jews, Muslims and Christians.”’
That is a clear call for an end to Israel as a majority-Jewish state.
His paragraph from Zion’s Christian Soldiers about opposing antisemitism is meaningless because in that same book he uses various antisemitic sources and turns a blind eye to the murder of Israelis, as this blog post makes clear:
http://largebluefootballs.blogspot.com/2008/04/overstepping-mark.html
Has anyone presented a dossier on Sizer to the CofE leadership? At the moment we in the UK are paying for this gentleman as a member of the state religious establishment, so the state is effectively subsidising this anti-Jewish extremism.
j.r.
A dossier to the CofE leadership would be welcome.
However, we in the UK don’t pay anything to the Church of England through taxes (unlike the practice in many European states) – clergy stipends are met through donations and endowments. In some ways it would be easier if we did, since it would give the state a reason to intervene.
Haha, shouldn\’t you be cahgring for that kind of knowledge?!
It’s absolutely fascinating that Sizer actually admits on p. 1 of the Jakarta news report that the return of the Jews to the British mandate of Palestine was supported by Biblical texts.
Hahaaaaa!!! Of course it was! The words of Jesus himself prophesied that the Jews would return after Jerusalem had been trampled by the Gentiles. This occurs in all the Synoptic Gospels, which even modern historical critics of the Bible tend to take as mostly historical (they don’t always accept John’s Gospel as historical).
Sizer wrote that ‘Palestine needs to be liberated from the Jews’. Interesting, because he has photos on his website with the caption ‘Jerusalem, Palestine’ and ‘Galilee, Palestine’.
Problem: these places are in the state of Israel.
Because Sizer in his photo captions renames the state of Israel ‘Palestine’, it must mean that he thinks that Israel must be liberated from the Jews.
He can’t have it both ways. He can’t speak of Palestine in the conventional way of the West Bank, etc. to one audience, but rename Israel Palestine to another audience.
Last July, a discreet meeting was held by a group of influential Anglican evangelicals to co-ordinate a new church approach towards Islam. The meeting was convened by Bryan Knell, head of the missionary organisation Global Connections, and others from a group calling itself Christian Responses to Islam in Britain. The 22 participants, who met at All Nations Christian College in Ware, Hertfordshire, were sworn to secrecy…The meeting had in its sights those ‘aggressive’ Christians who were ‘increasing the level of fear’ in many others by talking about the threat posed by radical Islam.
The aim was thus to discredit and stifle those Christians who warn against the Islamisation of Britain and Islam’s threat to the church. Those who do so include the Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali, the Africa specialist Baroness Cox, the Islam expert Dr Patrick Sookhdeo and the Maranatha Ministry…
I blogged this here. The story has doing the rounds for a couple of weeks, and it has been promoted because a journalist named Ben White gave Sookhdeo a bad review of his new book, Global Jihad, on the evangelical website Fulcrum. After the review was published, Sookhdeo was then “discredited and stifled” by being given right of reply on the same website. Two supporters of Sookhdeo wrote an essay which was duly published, but they also produced a second version containing extra sections of astonishingly crude attacks on White. Andrew Brown at the Guardian drew attention to the inflammatory version of the counter-review – but Phillips points out that Brown seems “to be driven by hostility to anyone who supported Israel”, so apparently we don’t need to go into that little embarrassment any further. Another, anonymous, article suggested that the bad review was part of a plot hatched at the Global Connections meeting to which Phillips refers, and this piece was distributed by email by Sookhdeo’s Barnabas Fund.
Phillips continues:
White then drew his review to the attention of a blogger, Islamist and Muslim convert called Indigo Jo. On his website, Indigo Jo anathematised Sookhdeo as the ‘Sookhdevil’. This attack was reproduced on various other Islamist websites and Sookhdeo has received a death threat as a result.
The tale is growing: “Indigo Jo” was rather rude about Sookhdeo, and Sookhdeo’s supporters did indeed try to puff this up into some kind of threat, telling us that:
The criticism of Patrick Sookhdeo which appeared on Indigo Jo’s website – and the epithet he coined “Sookhdevil” – have now appeared on a number of other Muslim websites, some of which appear to be radical. One of them calls for Muslims to go and fight in Gaza.
However, there was no death threat mentioned then, and if there has been one since, how come only Phillips has heard about it? And besides, as I pointed out before, Sookhdeo’s hostile views about Islam have been public knowledge for years – Global Jihad is unlikely to add to any extremist threat he may be under. Compared to White’s temperate review, the whine about White putting Sookhdeo at risk was an unworthy and intelligence-insulting attempt to, erm…”discredit and stifle” a critic.
Meanwhile, Sookhdeo has issued a new statement, co-authored with Sam Solomon and a certain Dennis Wrigley:
A number of accusations have been circulating in the media about Sam Soloman, Patrick Sookhdeo and the Maranatha Community, the movement which Dennis Wrigley heads. Some of the accusations apparently have arisen in regard to discussions held at a closed meeting convened last July, which, among other issues, discussed a perceived growth of fear of Islam and Muslims felt among Christians in the UK. Some attributed this fear to aggressive teaching by Christians concerning negative aspects of Islam and advocated promoting an alternative approach.
What does this mean? The only “accusations” that “have been circulating in the media” concerning this affair were the shrill attacks promoted by Sookhdeo’s supporters against White and Global Connections. The statement continues:
The majority of those who attended the meeting advocated maintaining a variety of approaches, which included ones that are openly critical of Islam. We would like to state clearly that we recognize that any individuals that were advocating limiting criticism of Islam were speaking their own opinions and were not following any official policy of CRIB (Christian Responses to Islam in Britain) or of Global Connections.
Whoops! So while Phillips has treated her Spectator readers to news of a conspiracy against Christians who speak out against Islamism, Sookhdeo appears to have backed down from the allegation – albeit it in a rather grudging and indirect way. But the authors soon return to form with a few more shock revelations:
We are living in a context of increasing hostility towards Christians both from secular society and from Islam. A key evangelist was threatened in public by a Muslim with a gun a week ago. A Christian leader who speaks out on Islam in Britain has received death threats. Another who writes widely on Islam had his offices burgled, apparently by Muslim extremists.
These are serious matters, and it’s frustrating that no specific details are provided.
I should add if the July meeting did indeed feature criticisms of Sookhdeo and Solomon that would in fact be quite reasonable. I blogged here about the disgraceful way that Sookhdeo misrepresented a Muslim book he’s been using as evidence of a Islamic conspiracy; Solomon provides alarmist briefings for the Lawyers’ Christian Fellowship worthy of Walid Shoebat.
CZ, Sizers captions on his photos are very revealing. On his Lebanon trip he has “liberated south Lebanon” liberated from who? He used to have on his Bethlehem trip photos a caption on the security wall photo “Arbacht macht Frei” which was the phrase used by the Nazis over the gate at Auschwitz! Sizer is a publicity junkie, he doesn’t care who invites him, he’ll speak anywhere as long as he can sell his books. What a vile self-centred little man!
motkehacohen,
you’ve been fooled by White’s appearance of being well-behaved. This is Ben White who supports the one-state solution for Palestine, which would be an absolute disaster, and who has said that while he doesn’t consider himself an antisemite, he can understand why some people might be…
You haven’t actually provided any evidence whatsoever that Sookhdeo backed down from the allegations. Where is this evidence ?
Your slur on Walid Shoebat says an awful lot, doesn’t it. Walid Shoebat should be commended by Christians given that he was once an Islamist and antisemite and is now a Christian.
Motkhe, haha you posted all that, what does it tell me about your hero Rev Sizer? Nothing!
motkhehacohen shame on you for repeating the cheap shot aimed at Walid Shoebat, and you are a prat for repeating that meaninless post which proves nothing about Sizer’s virtue only that Sizer has followers who will defend him no matter what the actual truth. Thanks for showing us that puppy dog motkhehacohen
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