Does Sabeel support boycott campaign against Israel?

This is from the Friends of Sabeel UK website’s Questions and Answers section:

Does Sabeel endorse an economic boycott against Israel?

A: Sabeel does not call for an economic boycott of Israel. It calls for morally responsible investment, ultimately leading to divestment from companies that profit from the Occupation, not from all Israeli companies.

And this is from Friends of Sabeel UK’s summer 2009 newletter: 

BOYCOTT!

The great British public is beginning to rouse itself to boycott Israeli

goods, especially those from the illegal settlements in the West Bank.

The most visible are fruit and vegetables, because we all see them on

the supermarket shelves, but there are many more, hiding behind “Made

in Israel” labels, but made in factories or grown on farms in the occupied

West Bank, on land belonging to the Palestinians

 

 

You can find out from the Gush Shalom website www.gush-shalom.org a very detailed list of settlement products, with a list of settlements, and a reasoned Frequently Asked Questions article, written from the perspective of Israeli Jews who oppose the Occupation.

In this country, Friends of Sabeel UK is represented on the Inter-faith Morally Responsible Investment group by Jan Davies and Tony Graham, who will gladly answer questions, both on investment issues, and boycott. The Boycott Israeli Goods and Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods campaigns also have a website you can search for information about actions to take: www.bigcampaign.org. This includes other forms of boycott, such as academic, cultural and sports boycotts

This information will help you to reach a decision about what you want to do. We encourage you to take any personal action you think is right for you, to join in local and national activities, write to supermarkets and companies, and lobby your MPs. We emphasise that any boycott is to last only until the end of the Occupation. It is not aimed against the Israeli people, but against the Occupation

A message for Brian McLaren

Benjamin Pogrund has a fantastic article on The Guardian website about boycotting Israel, which Brian McLaren would do well to read.

Former UCC rep Hanns F. Skoutajan praises A.C. Forrest

Rev. Dr. Hanns F. Skoutajan, past chair of the former Committee of the Church and International Affairs of the United Church of Canada, writes in the Ottawa Citizen claiming that the UCC’s proposed Israel boycott was due to its “deep concern” about the “unholy land”.

Re: Why I went to the United Church conference, Aug. 17.

There is no doubt that Israel is the most democratic state in the Middle East, but that isn’t saying much. I was pleased to read Rabbi Reuven Bulka’s reflections on his visit to the general council of the United Church in which he makes the point that Arabs are included in most aspects of the political and social life of Israel. I have been there numerous times and have met openly with Israeli officials as well non-Jewish professionals in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

What Rabbi Bulka totally omitted in his article, and what the United Church, the World Council of Churches as well as the United Nations and now also the United States are concerned about, is Palestine. Nowhere in his article does the rabbi refer to the West Bank, Gaza and the treatment of Palestinians in East Jerusalem.

The United Church over many decades has been expressing deep concern about the refugees after their displacement in 1949. A.C Forrest, former editor of the United Church Observer in his book The Unholy Land (UCPH 1971), which won 10 National Best Seller Awards in a very short time, proved to be prophetic. He was immediately and viciously attacked from many sides and not only from Jewish organizations. His critique stands today, and unfortunately Rabbi Bulka did not address it.

A youth delegation from the United Church recently visited the West Bank, and made its first-hand report of the situation to general council. The group’s testimony was downplayed, to put it mildly, by pro-Israeli groups at the council last week in Kelowna, B.C.

Until the Palestinian situation is resolved by a genuine two “free” state solution, there will be no peace in the Middle East. The United Church is not infiltrated by anti-Semitism but rather deeply concerned that the “Unholy land” become truly Holy.

Rev. Dr. Hanns F. Skoutajan,

Past chair of the former Committee of the Church and International Affairs

The United Church of Canada

Ottawa

On Harry’s Place, Lbnaz comments:

the letter to the Ottawa Citizen from a Rev. Dr. Hanns F. Skoutajan, “Past chair of the former Committee of the Church and International Affairs”, unsurprisingly, given the activity of the committee he chaired, makes a glowing reference to one A.C. Forrest, a UCC antizionist and Arab nationalist activist who was chief editor of the UCC’s magazine ‘the Observer’ and who from his editorial chair immediately following the 1967 six day war, ensured that nearly every issue of the magazine would contain an article denouncing Israel. Skoutajan says that critics of the UCC resolutions are at fault for never addressing the validated arguments put forward by A.C. Forrest in his book.

In the chapter entitled: ‘A Church Divided: A.C. Forrest and the United Church’s Middle East Policy’ (beginning on page 86), of Canadian political scientist David Taras and David Howard Goldberg’s book: ‘The Domestic Battleground: Canada and the Arab Israeli Conflict’, the authors provide a balanced history and dispassionate account of the history of A.C. Forrest’s and the Committee of the Church and International Affairs’ antizionist campaign.

And it’s all there, by which I mean, the identitical antizionist talking points that A.C. Forrest, the Observer and the Committee of the Church and International Affairs promulgated in the late 1960’s and early 70’s are the ones we read and hear about today: Israel napalms Arab children; Israel’s military efforts are disproportionate; Israel is worse than Apartheid South Africa; Israel can be paralleled to Nazi Germany; UN Human Rights Commission pronouncements are authoritative when it comes to Israel; All UNRWA clients must be repatriated into Israel (aka the one Palestinian Arab Islamic state solution), in order to attain a just peace; Zionists in the form of a “Network”, and in Canada, masterminded and operated by the Mossad and the B’nai Brith, control the media and the foreign affairs of Western states and not only stifle free expression, press freedom and academic freedom through harassment -i.e. critics referring to antisemitism-, but also penetrate every corner of our nation; We antizionists are martyrs for speaking truth against the power wielded by the nefarious Zionist-controlled MP’s and government (of course notwithstanding Taras and Goldberg pointing out that Forrest and the Committee were received warmly by some, but not all bureaucrats serving in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and a small coterie of sympathetic MPs).

And from the other side, Taras and Goldberg show that the UCC did not wind up electing A.C. Forrest to be Church Moderator, despite the support he received and the newly elected Moderator got Forrest and his legal counsel to issue a carefully worded apology to the B’nai Brith. We also learn that both A.C. Forrest and an opponent of his, Rabbi Gunther Plaut, required security due to fears, threats and intimidation on whatever side.

In 1972, about 6 months prior to the massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics by the Palestinian ‘Black September’, Forrest published an article in the Observer penned by John Nicholls Booth entitled “How Zionists manipulate your news” which accused Israel of…

causing “a trail of global tensions, the longest and blackest record of international censures against any nation, 1,500,000 heartbroken and homeless refugees and three wars.” Booth argued that “the Zionist network” wielded enormous and disproportionate power and that it was disloyal and sinister. His view was that “Israeli intelligence, through B’nai Brith’s A[nti] D[efemation] L[eague], Zionist organizations, temples and rabbis, penetrates every part of our nation.” He believed moreover that anyone who criticized Israel was certain to be labelled an antisemite and that this was a form of “harassment” used by the Anti Defamation League to intimidate potential critics of Israel.

[...]

Forrest’s original position was that he would apologize [as a result of a number of suits and countersuits between B'nai Brith and the Observer and UCC], only if “anybody could show me there was anything incorrect or false in it… I refused to go along with the moderator and secretary of the General Council in coming to any sort of agreement.”

Now I haven’t read A.C. Forrest’s book (which I think is also available on line for the interested), but since Mr. Forrest didn’t think there was anything incorrect in the John Nicholls Booth article he published in 1972, perhaps his acolyte Rev. Dr. Hanns F. Skoutajan, past chair of the former UCC Committee of the Church and International Affairs, might also want to address the points made in Booth’s article since he expects his opponents to address the antizionist talking points in Forrest’s book.

So, given the UCC’s concern for truth and justice, what do they think about Skoutajan recommending A.C. Forrest’s perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

More on the UCC boycott

Haskell Nussbaum writes about the failed UCC boycott of Israel in the Jerusalem Post, concluding:

Ultimately, it is a failure of our education, both secular and Jewish, that so many Jews and Christians believe that it is permissible or even mandatory to boycott Israel. And it is a failure of profound proportions that a church committee representing the largest Canadian Protestant community, in a city with Canada’s largest Jewish community, could be so unaware of that community’s normative values that it could believe that it was acting morally, and with Jewish support, by targeting the world’s only Jewish State.

UCC rejects Israel boycott

Here.

See also:

I expressed concerns about the UCC’s proposed boycott here.

Limerick 1904/Kelowna 2009

Shame on the United Church of Canada if they follow through with their proposals for a boycott of Israel, which are currently being discussed in Kelowna.

According to the Vancouver Sun, the four resolutions call for a “comprehensive boycott of Israeli academic and cultural institutions at the national and international levels”. Furthermore, pro-Israel advocacy group Camera complains that UCC members have been pushing a faulty analogy between Israel and apartheid South Africa in order to justify the boycott proposals.

However, the UCC are insisting the proposals are not intended to be antisemitic. Their spokesman Reverend Bruce Gregersen commented:

The Canadian Jewish Congress has consistently argued that language that seeks to undermine the existence of the state of Israel is anti-Semitic. And we would agree with that[...] But these proposals are not meant to undermine the state of Israel but rather calling on them to make moves towards peace. In 2003, the Church said that we affirm the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state. And that’s a significant commitment. What is means is that we are strongly supportive of the existence of Israel for the sake of the Jewish people in the world.

The UCC doesn’t seem to grasp a simple point: just because you are not being racist deliberately does not mean you are not being racist.

Does the UCC not realise the history of church boycotts against Jews? For most Jews this boycott will have nothing to do with the Middle East. This policy will be interpreted as the next shameful episode of Christian antisemitism. It will be an embarrassment for the church itself, and will cause more harm than good.

The Kelowna boycott is intended to hurt Israeli businesses. It will also affect Jews with cultural and academic links to Israel, and will lead to the exclusion of individual Israelis who hold similar political views on Israel/Palestine to the UCC. People will be shunned from public life because of where they are born.

As for historical resonances, you can learn about the 1904 Limerick Boycott here, which was inspired by clergyman Fr John Creagh.

Justifying his decision to boycott Jewish business in the Northern Whig, 8 Feb 1904, Creagh wrote:

“…and, as for the Jews in business, I am quite prepared to admit that there are many who are irreproachable. What people have been pleased to call my crusade has been directed only against a class of Jewish traders who grind and oppress those who are unfortunate enough to get into their power – who exact extortionate sums under the instalment system from those who can ill afford to pay them.”

The United Church of Canada should be able to show its desire for peace between Israelis and Palestinians without excluding persons and businesses of either nationality.

Yet clergy-led boycotts of Jews are a part of a shameful history of Christian antisemitism that should be shunned by all churches which are serious about avoiding racism and discrimination.

War on Want a.k.a. War on Israel

Carol Gould writes about War on Want’s disgraceful ban on Jonathan Hoffman:

I will pause here and say it was a blessing in disguise that I delayed by a week or so writing up this story. It has now become an international issue because Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, has made it known to the British Charity Commission that he wants War on Want investigated for breach of its guidelines[...]

Read on.

Friends of Sabeel UK speaker is also a conspiracy theorist

Back in March, I blogged about Friends of Sabeel UK’s annual conference, which boasted Dr David Halpin, a Hamas supporter, as its lead speaker. (More details of the conference at the Friends of Sabeel UK website). Friends of Sabeel UK is an anti-Zionist pressure group which acts amongst churches and NGOs, with various anti-Israel boycotters listed as patrons.

Halpin is also, Harry’s Place reveals, a conspiracy theorist who thinks the government had Dr David Kelly killed.

Furthermore Halpin is a 7/7 troofer:

On 7/7 (from 28:18)

“Where the law ends tyranny begins, so that’s why we go on about Dr David Kelly, because we haven’t had an inquest on Dr David Kelly, and you’ll hear people infer Muslim connections to the bombings of 7/7 in London, and yet there’s been no inquest on any of the victims, either the alleged perpetrators or the 52 victims… all we’ve had is 32-page commentary from a Home Office (lawyer?)…”

In the same video, we get a glimpse of Halpin’s views on Israel:

“It’s not a country, it’s a Zionist entity… That’s what I call it when I write about it… I write about it a lot, I think about it a lot too…”

“I was galvanised by the bombing of Afghan people, some of the poorest people on Earth, by B-52s from 32,000. I was so outraged I decided to act, and I knew that Palestine was the hinder(?) of humanity.”

How does anyone help the Afghan people through anti-Zionism? Anyway, it would be interesting to find out whether Halpin offered up any theology at the Sabeel conference, although this phrase may have endeared him to Sabeel:

I have met Ishmail Haniyeh, the PM, in March 2007 with fellow doctors, and other Hamas ministers since. I would judge them to be trustworthy men who are doing what is right for their tormented people, unlike the collaborator Abbas and his friends. Insight into Hamas, and the literal crucifixion of these people, can be gained from reading the recent letter in the Washington Post by my surgeon colleague Dr Mahmoud Al Zahar.

Literal crucifixion? Sabeel seem rather fond of this language. Here’s Sabeel founder and leader Naim Ateek talking about Israel at Easter:

In this season of Lent, it seems to many of us that Jesus is on the cross again with thousands of crucified Palestinians around him. It only takes people of insight to see the hundreds of thousands of crosses throughout the land, 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.

Hopefully British Christians will steer clear of this lot.

Britain charity sponsors event accusing Israel of apartheid

From the Jerusalem Post:

A prestigious local community venue in east London was set to host an event on Thursday night organized by a charity that supports and funds a boycott of Israel and accuses Israel of being an apartheid state.

Moreover, the charity made it clear to the co-vice chair of the Zionist Federation, Jonathan Hoffman, that he would not be allowed to attend.

Toynbee Hall was to host the launch of a book titled Israel Apartheid: A Beginner’s Guide. The controversy surrounding the event allegedly led to one of the venue’s funders to pull out. The book was written by journalist Ben White. In one of his articles, White said he understood why some people are anti-Semitic.

“I do not consider myself an anti-Semite, yet I can also understand why some are,” White said. “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.”

Thursday’s event was sponsored by a charity called War on Want, which is accused of having an anti-Israel agenda.

“Despite passing themselves off as a mainstream aid charity, War on Want runs virulently anti-Israel campaigns,” said Jon Benjamin, chief executive of the Board of Deputies of British Jews. “It supports and funds a boycott of Israel, promotes this idea to libel Israel as ‘apartheid’ and complains about ‘Zionist pressure’ if anyone objects.”

Read on.

How generous is Brian McLaren’s ‘Generous Orthodoxy’?

Is anyone else exasperated by the formula that the more someone claims to wants peace, the more hostile he or she should be to Israel?

One of the loudest Christian champions of ‘peace with anti-Zionism’ (my words not his) is Brian McLaren, whose concern for peace in the world has convinced him to lead the Everything Must Change team. You can read the website’s peace initiative here. Judging by his book Generous Orthodoxy, McLaren seems to have an earnest desire to promote peace and tolerance. Yet at the same time, the Jerusalem Post identifies McLaren as one of the three of the most prominent evangelical critics of Israel alongside Jimmy Carter and Stephen Sizer.

McLaren is a leading figure in the Emergent Church movement, which seeks to deconstruct traditional church culture and move away from politically conservative American evangelicalism. McLaren is portrayed on his website as someone who takes peace and social justice seriously. Thus, it is important for Christians who listen to McLaren to closely scrutinise his approach to social justice and the accuracy of his statements.

McLaren signed the Joint declaration by Christian Leaders on Israel’s 60th Anniversary, which was organised by Ben White and Philip Rizk. McLaren’s interest in global social justice focuses in particular upon the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Back in January, in a post about Gaza drawing attention to the writings of Hannah Mermelstein, 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.

In the immediate aftermath of the December-January 2009 Gaza war, McLaren urged his readers to take these words of Ben White seriously:

THERE are often two obstacles to the taking of an appropriate stance to wards a just peace in Palestine/Israel by Churches and Christian groups in the West. First, it can be difficult to formulate a meaningful critique of Israeli policies without attracting cries of “excusing terrorism” or “anti-Semitism”. The latter accusation is especially levelled against Christians who join the global movement to put pressure on Israel by using boycotts and disinvestment.
….
More than ever, Christian leaders and Churches need to stand up and be counted. This could mean many things: pilgrimages that show solid arity with Palestinians; targeted boycotts of Israeli products; writing to MPs; inviting Palestinian speakers; twinning; film screenings; selling Palestinian-made goods.

So here we have Brian McLaren, someone who loudly professes the values of peace and justice, drawing attention to Ben White’s call for boycotts against Israel (I am sure McLaren is ignorant of Ben White’s bigoted attitudes towards Israel and Jews, his approach to antisemitism andantisemitic violence, his flirtation with Holocaust denial, as well as his view that boycotting Israel itself is ‘non-violent resistance’ that is designed to go hand-in-hand with violence resistance).

It is bizarre to see a Christian leader publicly admonishing other Christians for being intolerant and unthinking in one sentence, and in the next breath supporting the organised global boycott movement against Israel, which includes a call for an academic and cultural boycott of Israelis from other countries. And surely excluding individuals based upon the country they are from is racist. It doesn’t matter what you say, what matters is where you were born. It is socially unjust. Christian leaders interested in social justice should be able to find productive methods of encouraging peace in conflict zones. Israel-Palestine should be no different (although it appears to be for Stephen Sizer). Using socially unjust, racist boycotts in an attempt to create social justice is morally and intellectually flawed.

How does Brian McLaren not realise this?

McLaren’s endorsement of anti-Israel boycotters chimes strangely with his self-professed tolerance of all people from all nations. In Generous Orthodoxy, McLaren explains how his faith 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 on page 250:

“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!