Sabeel’s impact on Christian charity
This is a guest post by Seismic Shock
Over the last few weeks, it has become readily apparent that charities are increasingly flexing their political muscles when it comes to Israel-Palestine. Oxfam, Christian Aid, War on Want and various other NGOs have issued factually inaccurate statements concerning Operation Cast Lead. Amos Trust, meanwhile, encouraged its supporters to watch the Go To Gaza, Drink The Seaplay. For whatever reason, it appears that radical anti-Zionism is becoming increasingly more popular among NGOs.
Interpal, for example, has worrying links to Hamas, whilst its leader Ibrahim Hewitt is an extremist. Interpal is a member of the Interfaith Group for Morally Responsible Investment (IMRI), a coalition group which puts pressure on the Church of England’s Ethical Investment Advisory Group to withdraw its funds from certain companies which work alongside Israel in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
The IMRI coalitian also includes Friends of Sabeel UK, whose patrons have variously endorsed the Taliban, Hamas and Hezbollah whilst calling for a boycott of Israeli goods. Friends of Sabeel UK finds its origins in the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem run by Naim Ateek, who once claimed:
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.
Ateek in turn has praised Hamas as a ‘liberation theology movement.’ Given the widespread support for Sabeel by many Christian organisations, it is worth pointing out that anti-Zionism and antisemitism is prevalent within large parts of political Christianity as well as political Islam.
The effects of Sabeel’s actions, rhetoric and theology have been seen in Sweden, and perhaps provide us with a glimpse of the future for the UK should IMRI be successful.
The leading Swedish Christian aid organisation is Diakonia, which was created by and is supported by the Swedish Alliance Mission, the Baptist Union of Sweden, InterAct, the Methodist Church of Sweden and the Mission Covenant Church of Sweden.
Yet bizarrely, Diakonia’s Policy Officer Joakim Wohlfeil has openly admitted that Diakionia is is more a lobby group with a clear political agenda for the Middle East than a Christian aid organisation. Wohlfeil also claims:
It is unreasonable to provide information about the Holocaust, in which Hitler murdered six million civilian Jews in a meticulously planned industrialised process, without at the same time providing information about “al Naqba”.
Diakonia’s regional manager in Jerusalem Cristoffer Sjöholm recently addresseda Sabeel conference, boasting of his organisation’s work of convincing a Swedish company to close a factory built in the West Bank.
Diakonia has previously funded a Sabeel survey, met with the Sabeel to discuss‘present and future partnerships’, and openly lists Sabeel as a partner in the Middle East. Naim Ateek himself has praised Diakonia’s work alongside Sabeel.
Diakonia also actively encourages a boycott of the train company Veolia, which has already been successful in Sweden. Now the Interfaith Group for Morally Responsible Investment in the UK is planning a similar move to boycott Veolia.
What is striking and disconcerting about the case of Diakonia in Sweden is that mainstream Christian institutions and the leading Swedish Christian charity have essentially allowed politically-driven anti-Zionist liberation theology to trump both Christianity’s call to ‘love thy neighbour’ and the core values of the Diakonia charity itself.
Yet at the same time, the status of Diakonia and of these church organisations in Sweden allows them to have a ‘halo effect’, as many will instinctively trust Diakonia due to its status and reputation.
Christian charity and reconciliation for both Palestinians and Israelis is clearly possible, as Andrew White’s Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation in the Middle East has shown. Yet if the Church of England and other UK-based Christian denominations allow themselves to be bullied in the coming months by what appears to be a pro-Hamas liberation theology agenda, they will be helping neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians.
Comments
| 16 March 2009, 3:47 pm |
<blockquoteIn 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.
You just want to heave.
Sabeel has nothing to say about the ethnic cleansing of Christians in the Middle East.
Nope, instead they waste their time ‘crucifying’ Israel, ironically the only country in the entire region where Christians can live in peace, dignity and security.
Perhaps they should move their operations to Saudi Arabia and imbibe the spirit of tolerance and give and take so characteristic of the place.
…seeings they bitch as though they’re on the payroll.
| 16 March 2009, 4:21 pm |
Funny that by Wohlfeil because ‘al Naqba’ is always mentioned without reference to the Jewish refugees
| 16 March 2009, 4:22 pm |
“It is unreasonable to provide information about the Holocaust, in which Hitler murdered six million civilian Jews in a meticulously planned industrialised process, without at the same time providing information about ‘al Naqba’.”
Like Lenny Bruce once said of Jerry Lewis, making Lewis a spokesperson for the mentally disabled was a bad idea as Lewis was living proof of how highly paid a complete idiot can be.
Joakim Wohlfeil must be a complete ignoramus. His employers have a great deal to feel proud about.
| 16 March 2009, 4:24 pm |
Another great post by Seismic Shock, well done again Mordechai
| 16 March 2009, 4:27 pm |
Yes, I agree – Bat Ye’or has written extensively about Palestine Liberation Theology in her work on Islam and dhimmitude – one can see the same process repeated here, and elsewhere (for example funding Muslim groups in Scotland).
| 16 March 2009, 4:28 pm |
Let’s not forget Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu who felt “honoured” to accept the role of Patron of Sabeel International to assist Sabeel “in its outreach and development work with Christian Churches around the world” in the midst of the suicide bombing wave in Israel in 2002.
| 16 March 2009, 4:36 pm |
My catholic sister told me last year about a sermon by one of the parish priests,recently returned from a trip to Gaza,who informed the congregation that the Israelis were nazis:this in a market town in East Anglia,where condemnation of Israel is not normally heard.
| 16 March 2009, 5:33 pm |
Oy. “Crucified Palestinians”?
Words fail.
| 16 March 2009, 5:54 pm |
liberation theology movement
An oxymoron if ever there was!
| 16 March 2009, 7:44 pm |
Sabeel, in the UK and elsewhere, is a poisonous organisation.
Naim Ateek, Sabeel sees Samson as the first suicide bomber (now that was neat, given that there were no such things as bombs in those days) in an attempt to excuse suicide murder of Israelis by Palestinians; and Sabeel is busily engaged in invidious revisionist theology which seeks to separate the Jewish people from their history in the holy land.
See: http://blog.camera.org/archives/2009/03/naim_ateeks_spring_tour.html
Thanks, Seismicshock, for this.
| 16 March 2009, 10:20 pm |
Excellent post, Seismic Shock.
Sadly, Ateek’s take on the Middle East conflict is widely accepted within the Church of England, many of whose members’ opinions are BBC/Guardian/Independent led. The Church Times rarely seems to recognise anything other than the ‘Palestinian narrative’ either.
Ironically many Anglican leaders recognise the ‘inalienable right’ of Palestinians to self-determination but aren’t prepared to extend that generosity to Jews! Instead, most adopt the Christian Aid position that Israel may exist just as long as it’s on Palestinian terms – apparently blind to the oft-stated position of Palestinian leaders that their aim is for an end to any Jewish state in the region.
Ateek’s shocking repetition of blood libel and deicide smears against Jews should have been condemned years ago by Anglican leaders. Instead, his theology was peddled around the country by Christian theatre company ‘Riding Lights’ in their unpleasant play, Salaam Bethlehem. At the production, their bookstall sold nothing except Sabeel publications and Ateek’s books and the play’s website contained links to all sorts of unpleasant organisations, some openly anti-semitic all deeply hostile to Israel.
| 16 March 2009, 11:47 pm |
Yes, Ateek really is awful, he’s a one-man time machine to the Dark Ages. More on Sabeel coming soon!
| 17 March 2009, 12:47 am |
Wendy, your comment reminded me of a disturbing sermon I recently heard at our Unitarian chapel. It wasn’t as overt as that, but was treading on it. There was an analogy between a comment she got annoyed by in a seminar that the Palestinians were lazy that it was just like comments that the Germans made about the Jews in the Nazi time. There was nothing wrong with her being annoyed with someone who was stereotyping the Palestinians as lazy, but she seems to be trying to generalize this attitude to the Israelis and make them into the new Nazis. It was all tied in somehow with the good Samaritan story and how she had looked up why the Samaritans were hated by the Jews. This was made more spooky by the fact that a few weeks earlier I had been at a meeting with her and expressed concern about the website that wanted people to name and shame friends of Israel groups. She was sympathetic, but compared the wrongness of this to the wrongness of naming and shaming the BNP. Was she simply saying that just because you disagree with someone, you shouldn’t expose them on the internet, or was she really thinking that friends of Israel groups were as bad as the BNP? I gave her the benefit of the doubt and assumed the former at the time, but now in connection with the sermon, I don’t know. I talked to her after the sermon, and she said it had nothing to do with the current Gaza situation, so perhaps I’m over-reacting, but I have a bad feeling about it, like if it was not what I am suspecting, I’m not sure what the point of the sermon was. The Samaritans desecrated the temple, so what? Has somebody led her to think the Israelis are killing the Palestinian because they did something comparable to desecrating the temple?
| 17 March 2009, 6:09 am |
Seismic Shock and Lauren
This list was passed to me last week. I suppose it was bound to happen. It’s ironic given that Israel’s opponents (rather than critics) so readily accuse those of us who challenge their assertions of trying to silence them …
| 17 March 2009, 9:14 am |
For links between Sabeel and other charities see this:
http://zionism-israel.com/israel_news/2008/12/british-pro-palestinian-ngos-abuse.html
I also find the links between Pax Christi, the CND and Stop the War very interesting.
Yesterday there were posters up in Manchester advertising a CND/STW campaign against NATO. They demanded the withdrawal of NATO troops from Afghanistan, and somehow managed to squeeze Gaza into the subject matter too, despite there being no foreign troops there.
Maybe Mr. Kent could explain that one?
| 17 March 2009, 10:37 am |
There is a movement within Palestinian and Arab Christianity to de-Judaize Jesus. They claim that Jesus was a “Gallilean” not a Jew. The best archeological evidence is that the people of the Galilee were indeed Jews. There is also antisemitism within the Liberation Theology movement. Amy-Jill Levine has a chapter in her book, The Misunderstood Jew called “With Friends Like Theses…”.
“Ateek in turn has praised Hamas as a ‘liberation theology movement.’ ”
With which, I think, there is nothing intrinsically wrong. The trouble then arises if he excludes Zionism on the same basis.