11-Jun-14: Where does this strategic deafness and moral blindness at World Council of Churches lead?

Badran, depicted on a Hamas website:
His call echoes the theme of the church group's
call, taking it a step further

A question to the politically-engaged Geneva-based leadership of the World Council of Churches:

You publicly called in mid-April, via an official WCC statement of solidarity, for expressions of Christian sympathy for what you termed (this is a direct quote) "some 5000 Palestinian men, women and children, languishing in Israeli jails". When you did that, did you understand that solidarity for their cause means being solid with people who are this week whipping up the masses and calling for acts of calculated Palestinian Arab murder directed at ordinary Israelis?

We pointed out to you some time ago ["17-Apr-14: Christian solidarity with unrepentant murderers: where's the outrage?"] that many of the "men, women and children" for whom you express your compassion are self-confessed murderers. Still more of them are proudly unrepentant terrorists. 

This did not stop your chief executive, the Reverend Dr. Olav Fykse Tveit, from calling on the 500 million worshipers belonging to WCC churches around the world "to pray for, visit, and tend to the needs of all [those] prisoners, no matter the reason for their detention."

No matter the reason for their detention is exactly the expression he used. A careful and well-prepared clerical gentleman, he surely understood and meant what those words convey in their plain sense. 

So we can surmise that, for the WCC, the key thing is not that they are murderers of innocent Jews but that they are 'languishing'. Thus Mr Tveit's address called upon the Christian faithful to

"remember Palestinian prisoners through prayers and acts of solidarity that restore to them their freedom with justice and dignity”

We wrote at the time that the justice and dignity permanently and irretrievably denied to victims like our 15 year old daughter Malki (that's her photo over on the right) of Palestinian Arab savagery have failed over the past decade to rise to the level at which the WCC feels it ought to speak out. 

It's difficult for us to not notice that the WCC leadership has been consistently silent, and remains silent, about the victimhood of Israeli children, women and men.

To be fair to them, Tveit and the learned elders of the WCC are not alone in their appalling moral blindness. 

Hamas calls on armed wing to kill soldiers and settlers | Elhanan Miller | The Times of Israel | June 10, 2014, 12:48 pm | Hamas has called on members of its armed wing in the West Bank to target Israeli soldiers and civilians in a bid to ease the plight of its prisoners in Israeli jails, a party spokesman said on Monday. “We call on the men of resistance in the West Bank, primarily the Al-Qassam Brigades, to fulfill their duty in protecting the prisoners on hunger strike by targeting the occupation soldiers and its settlers,” Hamas spokesman Hussam Badran wrote on his Facebook page Monday. “The occupation must pay a high price in the blood of its soldiers and settlers until it is persuaded to solve the issue of prisoners on hunger strike. This is everyone’s task, on the individual and organizational levels,” he wrote... [Times of Israel]

This Hussam Badran happens to be someone about whom we know a thing or two. In "3-Feb-13: Little noticed, unjustly-released terrorists are in charge of the ongoing jihad attacks against Israelis", we quoted the British newspaper, The Guardian, certainly no great friend of Israeli policies, reporting on Badran's part in the 'Gilad Shalit for Terrorists' transaction of October 2011:

Fresh lilies are regularly laid at a monument by the Tel Aviv Dolphinarium bearing witness to an evening in 2001 when 21 Israeli teenagers were killed while queuing outside a nightclub. Another 132 were injured in the attack by Saeed Hotari, a young Palestinian suicide bomber affiliated with Hamas. But last week flowers arrived more in protest than in sorrow. Husam Badran, the former head of Hamas's military wing in the West Bank and instigator of the Dolphinarium attack, is expected to be among 477 Palestinian prisoners released on Tuesday in a deal to free Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. A further 550 will be freed within two months. "It's surreal. It's beyond belief," said one young mother angrily as she looked at the monument. "I may be the only one against it, but no good deal sees the release of 1,000 killers. People say Netanyahu showed courage in agreeing to set them free, but I say he has given in to terrorism." [The Guardian, October 16, 2011]

Badran, a monstrous man, walked free in the Gilad Shalit transaction in 2011. He has been living since then in Qatar where he re-established a career doing what he knows best - plotting against the lives of Israelis, and encouraging others to execute. (A terrorist cell connected to him was penetrated by the Israeli security establishment in February 2013 with numerous subsequent arrests - see our post.) Our guess is that Badran, the convicted and unjustly freed murderer, must be thrilled to bits by the moral support given to him and his co-conspirators by the WCC via its call for "freedom with justice and dignity... [for] all [those] prisoners, no matter the reason for their detention."

If you're new to our angry criticism of the World Council of Churches, then please know that as the parents of an innocent child murdered by those prisoners, we have made sincere efforts to engage the appropriate people at WCC Geneva in discussion. We felt a mission to explain to them the very bad things they are doing and to hear their self-justifications, if they can offer any. So far, they have not.

But it's actually worse than that. As we wrote here ["6-Jun-14: Fear and loathing at the World Council of Churches"], the WCC (self-described as "the broadest and most inclusive among the many organized expressions of the modern ecumenical movement, a movement whose goal is Christian unity... breaking down barriers between people, seeking justice and peace") says via its Director of Communications that it's unwilling to get into a discussion. Here's the full text of his letter to us dated June 5, 2014:

Dear Mr. Roth, Yes, I believe we would have nothing further to say.  Best wishes to you and your family. Mark Beach, WCC Director of Communication

So take it from this non-Christian, non-Moslem couple: there's something seriously wrong with a major global-facing church roof-body that wishes freedom, justice and dignity for convicted murderers but rolls down the shutters when a family devastated by the actions of those very murderers engages them in serious, albeit critical, discussion.

We hope some of our church-going readers will see fit to pass this post around. If you're not sure, the names and websites of all the WCC member churches are here: "23-May-14: On the dignity of murderers and their victims: An appeal to Christian friends". 

We'll sign off with a word to the WCC management team sitting there in Geneva: it's never too late to do sincere repentance and to come back and openly discuss these very serious life-and-death issues - even with people as marginal as we are to your mission.