Antisemitism and Christ at the Checkpoint 2012

I have compiled a report, on antisemitism and the Christ at the Checkpoint conference.

You may download this document  here:

Antisemitism and Christ At The Checkpoint 2012.

Christ at the Checkpoint speakers claim to oppose violence and racism

The Christ at the Checkpoint conference scheduled for 2012, aims to:

“provide an opportunity for evangelical Christians who take the Bible seriously to prayerfully seek a proper awareness of issues of peace, justice, and reconciliation.”

To do so in a Christian way, you would need a commitment to truth.

Here is the 3rd affirmation of the Christ at the Checkpoint 2012 conference:

As followers of Jesus Christ we regret more than 60 years of conflict. We look forward to the time when the conflict will end and both peoples will enjoy genuine reconciliation. We commit ourselves to be peacemakers and to this ministry of reconciliation. As such we stand resolutely against all forms of violence and racism, regardless of the perpetrators.

Is Christ at the Checkpoint 2012 against all forms of violence?

They claim to be.

More importantly – do Christ at the Checkpoint organisers and speakers, tell the truth about political violence?

Here is Christ at the Checkpoint organiser Stephen Sizer, speaking about the 2010 flotilla to Gaza, that was intercepted by Israeli forces:

Getting behind the flotilla is a fantastic way [that] people here in Malaysia can help. Getting relief supplies into Gaza, breaking the siege. It embarrasses America and it embarrasses Israel. The ordinary human beings are willing to risk their lives to sail supplies into Gaza. We saw what happened to the Turkish flotilla. Coming up very soon there’ll be a larger flotilla […] so we’re really excited about what we can do together.

Remember – Christ at the Checkpoint organisers and participants claim to be against violence.

Let’s just remind ourselves of the Turkish flotilla’s cargo.

Adam Deifallah writes:

There are five easy, safe and legal crossing-points in Israel through which to reach Gaza: the northern Erez crossing, the eastern Karni crossing (specifically designed for cargo), the southern Sufa crossing, the Kerem Shalom crossing and Rafah. If the flotilla’s real intention were to deliver aid to Palestinians, it could be done wth no problem by passing through any of these points.

Items truly for humanitarian aid get through to citizens already. It is only those deemed as “dual-use” — things like steel pipes, fertilizer and cement — that are blocked. Some of the items on last year’s flotilla included ballistic vests, gas masks, night-vision goggles and clubs. You can expect more of the same this time.

Strange cargo to call “relief supplies”, surely.

Moreover, the Turkish flotilla was all about raising funds for Hamas, and open antisemitism, Jew-baiting, and martyrdom. Yet Sizer supports this outfit without hesitation.

Earlier this year, Christ at the Checkpoint speaker Ben White addressed a PSC meeting, commemorating one year on from the flotilla.

Here is what Sami Awad – another Christ at the Checkpoint 2012 speaker – had to say about the flotilla, in the week after the event:

The world woke up Monday morning to a shocking and tragic scene, as Israeli commandos launched an unprovoked raid on a flotilla carrying nonviolent activists attempting to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza.

According to Sami Awad, the flotilla activists were “nonviolent”.

Yet this was found on-board their cargo:

As were these:

Here are the “nonviolent activists” of the Gaza flotilla, loading weapons on-board:

Here they are calling for the murder of Jews:

Here is one of the flotilla leaders, calling for participants to throw Israeli commandos overboard:

You can see antisemitic hate preacher Raed Salah in the front row, on the flotilla.

Salah thinks Jews did not turn up for work on 9/11, and Jews baked matzah bread with the blood of Christian children, during the Middle Ages:

Sizer, White and Awad all support Raed Salah as a political voice.

So CATC 2012 speakers like Ben White, Stephen Sizer and Sami Awad, claim to oppose violence and racism, but are happy to pretend the Gaza flotilla 2010 was non-violent and non-racist.

This is dangerous theological and moral ground.

Here is a full list of speakers, at Christ at the Checkpoint.

A Review of Sizer Reading’s Palestine Solidarity Campaign

This is a guest post by Levitt on a Palestinian Solidarity Campaign meeting that Stephen Sizer addressed.  – Part 1.

When you first meet Stephen Sizer it’s hard to see what the fuss is about. I heard him at a recent “The Middle East Conflict, a Christian Perspective” meeting.  He is a small framed, grey haired individual, with glasses.  He dresses smart casual in beige jacket, with Oxford blue cotton shirt. He looks as gentle as a sheep. His speech is temperate, soft, and sounds kind, compassionate and concerned. He carefully chooses his words, frequently pausing to craft his sentence prudently. His presentation is persuasive, with colourful well-organised slides. He speaks with an air of authority on many subjects regarding Israel such as its geography, history, religion and politics. But don’t be deceived by the sheep’s clothing, when you study his words closely you’ll see his wolf’s teeth.

Speaking to a modest group of about two dozen, Sizer says of the church, there is, “a reluctance to speak out on Palestine, because of our guilt, for the Holocaust and the suffering of the Jewish people at the hands of Christians in Europe over 100’s of years, and we should repent of that, and get over it, and make sure we treat Jews and Arabs the same.”

Firstly I agree that Jews and Arabs should be treated righteously and fairly. The conflict is complicated, and every follower of Yeshua, Jew or Gentile should pray and hope for the peace of that land and for justice to be done. I would hope that whatever our religious viewpoint no one wants to see a fellow human suffer whatever their race or religious viewpoint. The church should do more to speak up against oppression all over the world.

But lets get back to Sizer, who treads on dangerous ground. He states that the church should repent of its guilt in European history. The shocking truth is that the Church has some responsibility for centuries of hatred and violent persecution, which was often been inspired by erroneous Christian theology. Christians should feel deep sorrow for the atrocities, which have been committed in “Christ’s” name.  Although there were brave people, the church in general in the Holocaust didn’t do enough to defend or help the Jewish people. For this we must be deeply sorry, and never deny the church’s responsibility. But according to Sizer, we should just get over it. Worse still he says the church’s sin is not so much it’s behaviour toward the Jewish people, but the sin is the guilt that some Christians still feel about that history of Church anti-Semitic violence and murder.

I am not against speaking out. We should help the oppressed and marginalised. However Sizer has a disproportionate interest in the minor injustices of Israel as a Nation. Why does he never mention the major injustices throughout the world? When does he speak of North Korea, China, Iran, the Arab world, I could go on?  Speak up if you want, Sizer, about the injustices the nation of Israel has committed. No nation is perfect. But why do you focus just on Israel and no other nation? There are two sides to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But why do you unexplainably present only the Palestinian side. I fear you discriminate and have a prejudice against the Jewish people and the Nation of Israel. You may speak softly and not say directly, but your words don’t deceive me.

Protestant Church in the Netherlands: “We see no point in a public boycott of a country”

In May, following a meeting with leading members of the Jewish community, the Protestant Church in the Netherlands produced this statement:

Jews and Christians share the scriptures of the First Testament. Christians do not replace the Jews in the Salvation history of God with mankind. The bond God made with the Jewish people has not been suspended; in Christ, Christians of all nations share in the blessing of the God of Abraham. The bond means that replacement theology is being rejected, and that the Protestant Church will always declare herself against antisemitism.

In the self-understanding of the Jewish people land and state of Israel play an important part. For the Jewish people, the Holy Land is also the Promised Land. The Protestant Church acknowledges the right of the Jewish people to live safely in the land of Israel. The present state of Israel has a starting point of international law, which is also entirely, and gratefully acknowledged by the Protestant Church. Wherever the continued existence of the state of Israel is on the line or is denied or where the fundamental safety of the inhabitants is an issue, the Protestant Church feels herself to be called upon to speak out against this and to talk to her partners about this. The sense of insecurity Jews in the Netherlands often experience, shows a parallel to the concern regarding the safety of the state of Israel in the region, and indeed in the global community.

On the other hand, the Protestant Church is aware of the appeal of the Palestinian Christians and is called upon to be critical towards the actions of the state of Israel where the rights of Palestinians are concerned. The disunity which is sometimes experienced in this remains undiminished. Standing for the rights of the Palestinians is no abatement from the emphasis on the safety of the state of Israel and vice versa.

Pajamas Media has since reported:

Then a group of clerics and members from the Protestant Church in the Netherlands (PKN) organized a petition demanding an end to ties between the Protestant NGO Kerk in Actie and Sabeel after it was shown that officials of Kerk in Actie collaborated with Sabeel — an Arab-Christian group — in propagating blatant lies about Israel.

Although the petition was unsuccessful in separating Sabeel from the PKN, the PKN still considering Sabeel to be a voice of the Palestinian Christian people, the PKN nevertheless said this:

The Protestant Church does not support the aims of the flotilla. We think this is counterproductive. We see no point in a public boycott of a country.This disqualify a nation as a whole. That should not be in the case of Israel and not in the case of Gaza.

Ben White, the riot clean-ups and “broadly white” “popular fascism”

Ben White is a journalist and poet who writes things like:

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

He likes to write about “resistance” in the Middle East – particularly in Palestine – and thinks violent resistance and non-violent resistance are“two sides of the same coin”.

Here he is tweeting about the London riots:

The article he links to is written by Dr. Sofia Himmelblau. She claims:

By the symbolic cleaning, cleansing and casting out of the rioters from the community, the sweepers appear to enact the closest thing to popular fascism that we have seen on the streets of certain ‘leafy’ bits of London for years.

The idea that people cleaning up after riots, are like fascists in any way, is obviously absurd. Moreover, when you’re thinking around the subject of fascism, Ben White isn’t the best person to trust. White recommends the writing of a Holocaust denier, in his book about the Middle East.

In the article that White thinks is “brilliant”, Dr Himmelblau claims that:

The strikingly middle-class, broadly white efforts to sweep issues of inequality under the carpet of a simulated big-society photo-op has been a telling, if little discussed, aspect of the recent rioting, making little headway in the scramble of blogposts and tweets attempting hasty analyses of the unfolding turmoil.

To illustrate her point about these “broadly white”, Oswald Mosley-type fascists, Himmelblau posts this image:

But what’s this?

Blabber Drive has uncovered something interesting!

Click the image below, to enlarge it:

It seems that Dr. Himmelblau edited out black people from her image, so she could portray the riot clean up as “broadly white”. She thinks this point strengthens her argument about the riots being close to “popular fascism”.

This is the kind of racist trash that Ben White swallows as serious political analysis.

Sorry Ben, stick to the poetry mate.

Islamic Republic and Peter Rushton

Important post from Potkin, an Iranian liberal blogger, about further connections between the neo-Nazi Far Right and Iran’s Press TV – this time concerning the white supremacist Peter Rushton.

Sami Awad compares Palestinian terrorists with Jesus, and Israel with Herod

Sami Awad, writing in Independent Catholic News:

 Troops who passed the Holy family in vigour entering Bethlehem from all corners in order to search for and kill the potential baby ‘terrorist’ who was some day to lead a revolt against oppression, become King and put an end to the reign of Herod. I was not able to take this story out of my mind as we were driving on dirt roads around Bethlehem and Beit Jala trying to leave Bethlehem slowly in a car with big TV letters (Press) taped to it, passing by big Israeli army tanks and army personnel carriers each pointing their guns at us. Israeli army troops were being brought from all corners into Bethlehem like Herod’s soldiers. Herod had lied to the Wise Men when he said that he wanted to find the baby Prince of Peace in order to honour him. Sharon lies to the world when he says that he wants to enter Bethlehem (and other Palestinian cities) in order to bring peace to the Palestinians and Israelis by rooting out “terrorist” cells and destroying them.

 

Introducing Sami Awad

Sami  Awad is a Palestinian Christian leader who has links with Lynne Hybels, and who has presents himself as a moderate Christian speaker. He is scheduled to speak at the Christ at the Checkpoint conference in 2012 alongside Stephen Sizer, Ben White, and others.

Awad is the founder of the Holy Land Trust.

Here is Sami Awad on a video interview:

Very sensible, mostly, but is he as moderate as he appears?

Stephen Sizer and the Palestine Telegraph

by Habibi:

Stephen Sizer of the Church of England offers a recommendation:

It is a link to an insane piece on the Palestine Telegraph website. It claims Israel has bumped off hundreds of nuclear scientists around the world, including by arranging plane crashes.

The author of the piece is Wayne Madsen, an antisemitic conspiracy theorist. For another measure of Madsen’s sickness and madness, see thisinterview. An excerpt:

I don’t believe the [9/11] attacks were planned by the FBI. I believe they were an operation carried out by Mossad, Saudi intelligence, with which Mossad has had and continues to have a close relationship since the days of the Safari Club of western and Middle East intelligence services combining their operations, and elements of the CIA. Cossiga, Gul, parliament members in Germany, Britain, and Japan, the late British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, and others all understood this was an inside job that also involved a handful of people at the top of the Bush administration, including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, A.B.Krongard of the CIA, and Rudolph Giuliani, as well.

The Palestine Telegraph is of course the hate publishing operation of Sameh Habeeb. Here are just a few examples of what it gets up to:

Videos about Sizer

Very interesting: