27-Jul-16: Pope "decries" what the Islamist terrorists do - disconnects it from religion

The church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray where the priest's throat
was slit by a pair of young Islamists yesterday [Image Source]

Via Wall Street Journal today, this depressing reaffirmation of the confusion at the highest levels over terror and those doing it that keeps counter-terrorism so relatively ineffectual...

Pope Francis Says ‘World Is at War,’ Decries Terrorist Attack on French Church | As he arrives for visit to Poland, pontiff says conflicts inspired by economic, political interests | FRANCIS X. ROCCA | Updated July 27, 2016 11:22 a.m. ET | ...Pope Francis added that the current violence was over economic and political interests rather than religion. “There is war for money,” he said. “There is war for natural resources. There is war for the domination of peoples. Some might think I am speaking of religious war. No. All religions want peace; it is other people who want war.”

Decrying, compared with the alternatives, can be a good thing. But it's not a counter-terror strategy. It will do precisely zero to save lives in the face of murder-minded zealots, many of them shiftless young men freshly admitted to a mostly-unprepared Europe.

Europe is at a loss to formulate strategies for fending off the jihadists. And its security resources have for years already [link] been close to exhaustion.

Pope Francis arrives in Poland today [Image Source]

The WSJ piece refers to yesterday's Islamist terror murder of the Rev. Jacques Hamel, 85, whose throat was slashed by a couple of Islamist teens while he was celebrating Mass at a church in a small town in Normandy, Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray. One of them is a known French jihadist Adel Kermiche, who was awaiting trial on terror charges and had been fitted with an electronic tag.

The murderous attack, says the WSJ reporter

broke the pattern of Islamist terrorist strikes in Europe, which have till now been limited to secular targets. Islamic State identified the two assailants, who were killed by police, as its “soldiers.” [Wall Street Journal, today]

Limited to secular targets? How about "07-Jun-15: In France, arrests in wake of an intended Islamist terror assault on a Paris church" and what about the many Jewish targets that have been threatened and attacked and the Jews who have lost their lives in jihadist attacks inside synagogues in France? And in Turkey? In Norway? In Denmark? In the UK?

30-Dec-14: Killers, heroes, passions and (sadly) churches

The now-convicted and imprisoned terrorist Al-Araja
at his trial, April 2013 [Image Source]

In the news reporting of this ongoing war, few voices are quite as malevolent as that of Issa Karake (sometimes written Qaraqe). Somewhat less than a household name outside the Palestinian Arab world, he gets wide and frequent coverage in the Arabic media, much of it serving as incitement for the people in his sphere of influence to do more terror.

Until recently, he was the Minister of Prisoners' Affairs in the Mahmoud Abbas regime. During the summer, he became the head of a brand new PLO entity, the Prisoners Affairs Authority that does pretty much exactly the same work - but now outside the PA. The reason why, like much of what happens in the terror business, is money-related and is described here. 

The man's frequent public speeches and talk-show appearances center on one theme: the heroic nature of Palestinian Arab terror and those who do it. That plus the unreasonable cruelty of the Israelis who stubbornly keep putting terrorists behind bars, refusing to let them out to be honored as men and women of transcendent achievement. (The good people of Palestinian Media Watch.have compiled an on-line archive of Karake video clips and speech texts, translated from the Arabic,) 

Now for his latest rant: 

PA minister legitimizes murdering Israelis [Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik, Palestinian Media Watch, yesterday] Ali Sa’ada, a terrorist prisoner who murdered a father and his one-year-old baby, was fined 3.5 million shekels by Israel. [But] that fine is "delegitimizing ‎the [Palestinian] national resistance", says Prisoners’ Affairs Authority Director ‎and PA Parliament Member Issa Karake. According to Karake, who holds the rank of ‎minister, the killing of one-year-old Israelis is legitimate "resistance". 

PA/PLO's Karake [Image Source]

Karake's ire about the practitioners of vicious terror being delegitimized has, of course, some relevant background. Perhaps this eludes the busy Palestinian Arab politician. Or else he hopes his audience will not want to know. So we want you to know.

Sa'ada, along with a number of other savages including one called Al-Araja, murdered Asher Palmer, 25, and his year-old baby son Yonatan on September 23, 2011. They were convicted of serious crimes and imprisoned. Leading up to the attack, they had formed themselves into a terror platoon that, over a period of months, honed the skills needed to become a car-based, boulder-hurling, mobile artillery squad. On that fateful September day, they propelled rocks into Asher Palmer's vehicle from the car in which they were riding on the same road. They succeeded in striking the infant in the head and caused the father to lose control of his car which ran off the road at speed. Father and baby son were killed. 

The tragic and senseless killing of Asher Palmer and Yonatan have held our attention here several times: 

25-Sep-11: "Only" rock throwers - but now a father and his infant son are dead;
27-Jan-12: Rocks of reality? A postscript;
18-Apr-12: Real rocks, real terror, real extremism, real deaths;16-Dec-12: Those murders and attempted murders about which you almost never hear.
2-Apr-13: Justice and rocks

Karake's shameless whine appeared in a news report carried by WAFA, the official Palestinian Arab news agency, on December 16, 2014. He asserts there that Israeli courts

collect large sums from the prisoners, and that 95% of the verdicts pronounced by these courts involve fines, some of which are exceedingly high... Karake noted the existence of an even more severe policy, which the occupation courts have been adopting, and which involves the passing of sentences on prisoners that force them to pay large sums in financial compensation to Israelis who have been exposed to resistance by Palestinians (i.e., terror attacks). He noted that [a fine of] 3.5 million shekels had been imposed on prisoner Ali Sa’ada, as compensation for the families of the killed settlers, with the aim of delegitimizing the [Palestinian] national resistance against the occupation.

Almost everything in that Karake sentence is invented nonsense. The idea that a system of law and order (Israel's) that arrests and imprisons men (Palestinian Arabs) who murder babies can be called a delegitimization of the killers and their self-justification is a breathtaking chutzpah. 

But there is a serious point here.

In the week before Karake's gems appeared in print, an IDF court handed down a ruling on a novel argument put forward by legal counsel for the grieving Palmer family. They, like most Israelis who are haunted by the specter of convicted, unrepentant Palestinian Arab murderers walking free, know from bitter experience that multiple life sentences imposed by Israeli courts can evaporate into the air once the politicians decide to let the killers walk free. 

How can Israelis with a serious passion for justice reduce the likelihood of further self-defeating, politician-engineered, prisoner-release deals like the infamous Gilad Shalit transaction of 2011?

The doubly-bereaved Palmer family's response was to come up with a tactic that substantially increases the price (literally) to be paid on some future date for any commutation of sentence of those convicted of murdering their loved ones. As the Jerusalem Post reported two weeks ago, they persuaded the court of their view:

An IDF court has granted massive punitive damages, in the amount of NIS 3.5 million, to the family of Asher and Yonatan Palmer, victims of a terrorist attack perpetrated by Ali Saada and Waal al-Arjeh. The unprecedented ruling was handed down late Thursday by the Judea Military Court against Saada, along with a prison sentence of two life terms plus 50 years, but has not been publicly announced. In February, the Palmer family’s lawyer, Adrian Agassi, requested massive punitive damages, but for an extended period there has been no decision, likely in part due to the novelty of the issue, as Israeli civilian courts in similar cases are capped in granting punitive damages beyond NIS 200,000.
Agassi called the decision a “legal price tag” which could better deter future terrorism and possibly make it harder to release those sentenced in any future prisoner exchange deal... The NIS 3.5m. is lower than the NIS 10m. that Agassi originally requested, but is still unprecedented, and Saada is expected to appeal. ["IDF court fines one of Asher Palmer’s murderers", Jerusalem Post, December 14, 2014]

Like us, Michael Palmer, Asher's father, has learned the hardest way not to rely on the political echelon's respect for the moral rights of terror victims. Instead, via some creative thinking and a dedicated legal team, he has taken steps to get court-ordered, novel, financial compensation that may make it harder for justice to be infuriatingly "pardoned" away again, as has happened over and over during the past three years. 

It's hardly a guarantee that the murdering thug is going to serve out his sentence. But as things stand today, the killer's freedom is going to cost someone about a million dollars in compensatory fines. 

WCC headquarters, Geneva: A notable lack of empathic warm
[Image Source]

Now if anyone out there is thinking that no person in his or her right mind could possibly share Minister Karake's sick view that the court-ordered fine amounts to delegitimizing Palestinian Arab "resistance", we now bring the world's largest church group into the discussion. 

It's a scandal about which we began writing in April 2014 [here] when the World Council of Churches published a call for solidarity by its faithful with what it called "some 5000 Palestinian men, women and children, languishing in Israeli jails". 

Though many of the convicts are self-confessed murderers and most of the rest are unrepentant terrorists, the WCC's chief executive, Olav Fykse Tveit, a Norwegian Lutheran, called on the worshipers in its member churches 

"to pray for, visit, and tend to the needs of all prisoners, no matter the reason for their detention. For Israel and Palestine, prisoners have taken on even greater significance than in the past."

That breathtaking phrase "no matter the reason for their detention" still rattles in our brain. What kind of theology does this man practice? Rev. Tveit went on to invite 

"the churches in the Holy Land to remember Palestinian prisoners through prayers and acts of solidarity that restore to them their freedom with justice and dignity”.

(You want to see the other comments we made at the time: "17-Apr-14: Christian solidarity with unrepentant murderers: where's the outrage?")

Like the unspeakable Karake, the head of the World Council of Churches weeps for the terrorists. His pastoral message calls for the unjustifiable freedom of the killers of babies to be restored; for the undeserving justice of the human bombs to be respected; and (yes, that's his word) for the dignity of the men who stuff nails inside bombs that they place on Israeli buses to win faithful Christian people's solidarity. 

WCC's Rev. Olav Fykse Tveit [Image Source]

As for the victims of those lethal passions, there is (how to put this charitably?) considerably less WCC empathy. 

As we noted here just a few days ago, the only substantive reaction we ourselves ever got (and we tried hard and repeatedly) came in the form of a personal note from the WCC's then Director of Communication, Mark Beach (he's evidently no longer in that position as of this month). In an email from Geneva to us dated June 5, 2014, Beach addressed the questions and sharply critical comments we had directed over and again at his boss. We wrote as parents of a beautiful child of 15, murdered by the thugs for whose dignity the Christians of the WCC had been asked to pray. Probably not that moved, Mr Beach helpfully informed us that:

Yes, I believe we would have nothing further to say.

And he has been as good as his word ever since. 

The background is here ["6-Jun-14: Fear and loathing at the World Council of Churches"]. The lyrics of a modern Hebrew song  entitled "Ha-Kotel" ("The Western Wall") come to mind: 

"Yesh anashim im lev shel even. Yesh avanim im lev adam". In English, "Some people have hearts of stone. Some stones have a human heart."

There is not much doubt, it has to be said, that on the life and death terrorism-centred matters about which we are writing, the upstanding Christians of the World Council of Churches and the terrorist thugs represented by Karake of the PLO/Palestinian Authority are on about the same plane. They share a similar nauseating regard for jihad and murder. They appeal for ever greater understanding of the terrorists and their lethal 'resistance' industry. And about the Jewish victims? Enough said.

We're baffled by the idea that religion-minded Christians can see this and yet not scream for the WCC leadership to be kicked down the stairs of their well-appointed Swiss office headquarters and out of their pulpits. 

31-Jul-14: What possible excuse could decent civilized leadership have for attacking a holy place of worship? Let's see

The Al-Sousi mosque, northern Gaza City, yesterday
[Image Source: Xinhua]

The headline above will make little sense if readers don't click below and view the video.

Photographs of mosques destroyed by Israeli forces in Gaza (like the one over on the right) are all over the web and the newspaper world right now.

The anger of Islamic masses is being whipped up as the outrageous desecration of holy places gets understood by believers. See for instance "Calls to Raid and Desecrate Al-Aqsa Mosque", "Historical mosque destroyed by inhuman zionist terrorists", "Palestinians Fiercely Clash With Zionist Army At Al-Aqsa" and many others.

Attacking places of religious worship is never something of which to be proud. It may have legal consequences, and certainly has an impact on public sensitivities. What would bring a military to open fire on a church, synagogue or mosque?

So let's take a look at a documented instance of desecration from this past week.

In the background, there's a well-established and shameful history of open manipulation of Islamic sensibilities by religious and political leadership of the various arms of the Palestinian Authority. See for instance this Palestinian Media Watch backgrounder, "Israel to destroy Al-Aqsa Mosque".

Is it time for some focus on the cold-blooded desecration of Moslem holy places by Moslems?

23-Jun-14: Divesting Presbyterians: An afterthought

We belong to those "Jewish brothers and sisters" whom the Presbyterian Church USA leadership professes to love, and suggest this post be seen as expression of love right back.

Below, there's a video clip of a remarkable CNN interview with  the new moderator of the church. The sharp questions, dull answers and skirting around the point make it worth a few minutes of our readers' attention.

Click here for the CNN interview

Just a couple of final comments (with thanks to our friend ES): We think the true intentions of PCUSA are unmasked when they decided to divest from Motorola Solutions. What was its sin? The supply of surveillance equipment to Jewish communities. Now that equipment is entirely defensive, aimed at stopping the kind of terrorists who enter settlements and murder Jewish children in their beds. It saves lives on both sides. If Motorola needs to be sanctioned for this, what does this say about the church's view of the rights of people living in those communities to be protected from murderous thugs?

And Hewlett-Packard? Their equipment went to assist the enforcement of the embargo on  the Hamas-controlled, terrorism-infected Gaza Strip for reasons that are clear enough to most open-eyed folk. Is that embargo illegal and is that why Motorola ought to be punished, along with Israel? There are plenty of haters of Israel who say 'yes'. But a major United Nations review in 2011 found it was lawful and appropriate.

So what does Friday's PCUSA decision really say about those who voted for it, their views of the Jewish state and those who live here, and the nature of love?

18-Jun-14: Sharing some thoughts with Christian advocates of an Israel boycott

Click for the video page

Presbyterians for Middle East Peace [website] asked two Israelis whose lives, in the group's words, have been forever changed by senseless violence to speak about their experience, the importance of reconciliation, and their hopes for the future.

They are Arnold Roth and Kay Wilson. Their two testimonies are online here in video clip form.

"For those of who truly care about peace, and I see them wherever I go in this country, we know that what's needed is to build bridges and not to blow them up." [Arnold Roth, speaking in the video clip]

The background is described today in a Commentary Magazine piece by Jonathan Mark: "Will the Presbyterian Church USA Vote for Divestment (and Irrelevance)?"

The Israel-Palestine Mission Network was formed by the PCUSA General Assembly in 2004, the same year in which it passed a resolution calling for “phased selective divestment in multinational corporations operating in Israel.” While the Assembly was at it, it claimed that the “occupation” was “at the root of evil acts committed against innocent people on both sides of the conflict” and lectured Israelis on the importance of making peace with the Palestinians... In 2012, they almost persuaded the Assembly to disinvest from Caterpillar, Hewlett Packard, and Motorola for “profiting from non-peaceful activities in Israel-Palestine.” They lost 333 to 331. Encouraged, they are back at it again at this year’s General Assembly, which is meeting this week... Those members of the General Assembly who are merely foolish, rather than hostile to Jews, may vote for the resolution, which is admittedly much narrower than the one passed in 2004, thinking it relatively benign. That is the BDS strategy. Get what you can get, then publicly marvel at your momentum, even if what you got is less than what you were able to get ten years ago... The more likely result, momentum-wise, is even more departures from the church... Presbyterians may notice that they have leaders, and that these leaders are, increasingly, radicals and fools. Even devoted churchgoers can’t be blamed for leaving a church when it starts to smell this bad.

Jewish clergy from right across the political spectrum have paid attention, and are expressing themselves about as clearly and unitedly as independent-minded leaders ever do: see "Jewish leaders from every state urge Presbyterian Church to choose partnership and reconciliation over divestment and division" (via Religion News tonight), and the forcefully expressed "Enough! Why we won’t be at the Presbyterian General Assembly" (Jerusalem Post today).

A Christian journal, The Layman Online, says that

"Since 2004 the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been second only to sexuality issues in generating controversy at PCUSA assemblies. And judging by the volume and ferocity of the overtures advanced this year, the intensity of the anti-Israel activists will again almost match that of the same-sex marriage champions... These measures will create the impression of a popular groundswell of Presbyterians demanding that their denomination rebuke the Jewish state. In fact, however, the overtures come from a handful of presbyteries that have a record of pro-Palestinian advocacy. PCUSA members in general are more moderate, and more divided, on Israeli-Palestinian issues."

If the boycott Israel campaign decision does pass, Presbyterian Church (USA), a mainline Protestant Christian denomination, would be the largest religious organization in the country to impose sanctions on Israel, writes the religion correspondent at Voice of America. He quotes the Rev. John Wimberly, a retired church pastor, urging Christians to think twice before imposing sanctions on Israel. “There is a 2,000-year history of economic sanctions being used by Christians aimed at Jews and it's a bloody, nasty history and that is kind of my bottom line opposition right there..."  The proponents of BDS ignore Palestinian attacks on Israel, he observes, while the divestment proposal at the church's General Assembly has been pushed by lobbyists from outside the denomination. Wimberley, by the way, is now on the steering committee for Presbyterians for Middle East Peace, the people who posted the Arnold Roth video.

Jonathan Mark's observation about a dwindling church membership is supported by numbers we saw today over at Wikipedia. There were 1,760,200 members of the Presbyterian Church (USA) in 2013 according to PCUSA's own data. There had been 3.1 million of them in 1984. The decline since 2000 (by our calculation) exceeds 30%. 

While being boycotted by Presbyterians (if that turns out to be their decision this week) is no great honour, we expect the State of Israel will somehow survive it. 

We do wonder though about the future of a mainline church in steep decline which puts its name to a publication like "Zionism Unsettled: A Congregational Study Guide", promoted via the church's online bookstore, and aimed at "advocating for the human rights of Palestinians under military occupation". The editors at CAMERA point out that it promotes some serious lies: that Zionism and Israel have been sheltered from debate, particularly in mainline churches in the US; that Jews were well treated in Muslim countries in the Middle East until Zionism arrived in the region in the 19th century; and that Israel is singularly responsible for the suffering of the Palestinians. 

CAMERA also notes that the Presbyterian booklet is endorsed by James M. Wall (of whom we wrote here: "18-Jul-13: When he lionizes child killers, is James M. Wall speaking for mainstream Christians") which, for us, pretty much speaks for itself.

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.

6-Jun-14: Fear and loathing at the World Council of Churches

Christian and Muslim leaders at a WCC
Geneva Conference [Image Source]

Had we read the celebrated British columnist Melanie Phillips' lucid and essential analysis of Christian anti-semitism in our day, with some focus on the role of the WCC in particular (published in Commentary Magazine a few days ago and highly recommended), we might have gotten smart enough to skip the following rather vexing chapter in our lives. Here's what we mean.

During April 2014, the World Council of Churches came out with a public call to its faithful that involved praying for the freedom and dignity of Palestinian Arab prisoners. It's in our opinion a deeply troubling and fairly ugly chapter, and one for which a strong push-back is called. 

We blogged about the WCC's campaign twice in the days that followed: "17-Apr-14: Christian solidarity with unrepentant murderers: where's the outrage?" and "22-Apr-14: Attention World Council of Churches: Will you now follow your own advice and speak up for the Arabs tortured and imprisoned by the PA?" If you have time, please take a look; we make some points that seem to have slipped past many other people.

We sent a letter to the WCC secretary general, Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, on April 24, 2014, with links to what we had blogged in the previous few days. We were ignored. This quite bothered us since, as we see it, our standpoint is not political or organizational. We speak only for ourselves, and our interest in the matter of the Palestinian Arab prisoners is pure and passionate. We felt sure the world's largest church organization would want to hear and comment.

So we sent the same again, along with copies to a number of WCC insiders, a few days later. Still ignored. 

We fired off one additional round, and this time we got a response from the WCC's Director of Communications. That correspondence, with some personal details left out to avoid unintended embarrassment to any WCC officials, eventually became part of another post of ours: "15-May-14: Knocking at the church door; not getting much response or understanding"

The Communications man at the WCC seemed to be sensitive to what was on our chests, and responded to us in a humane sort of way. You can see our exchange in the link we included in the previous paragraph. Then he explained that he was heading for 

"a week-long absence from the office [and] should be able to access email later on Monday, however, that depends on access to the Internet. Best wishes to you and your family."  

We got that on May 11, 2014. We interpreted it to mean he would be back in touch with us after the week-long absence, and perhaps sooner. The issues we had raised, after all, were non-trivial and we had some heavy points to make based on first-hand experience of terror and terrorists. The WCC's secretary-general had not himself responded at any stage, so it seemed to us that we were speaking with his proxy. 

So here's what happened next: Nothing.

Yesterday (Thursday June 5, 2014), having gotten no further WCC emails for nearly four weeks, we wrote again:

"To be sure there is no misunderstanding between us, we received nothing further from you or anyone else in the WCC after your note of May 11, below."

Here's the full text of the response from the man in charge of communications with the world on behalf of the World Council of Churches:

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

It took us no more than a few minutes to compose and send a brief response, thanking Mr Beach for his candor which we said was "refreshing, and puts a clear interpretation - different from the plain meaning of the words you used - on what you wrote" the previous month when he had spoken about planning to respond, and wishing the best to us and our family. 

That's how we arrived at the insight that this is how the World Council of Churches' leadership relates to people who disagree with what we regard as their disgraceful fawning over convicted and determined murderers.

Here's a very small part of what Melanie Phillips has to say in her fine analysis, the one published a few days ago at Commentary, about a certain flavour of Christian hostility towards Israel in the 21st Century:

This hostility has been heavily influenced by the World Council of Churches (WCC), which was founded in 1948, within months of Israel’s own founding. The Middle Eastern churches that belonged to the WCC had learned to adapt their message over the years to placate the Islamic rulers of the Arab countries where they were situated. As a result, the WCC hardly ever mentions the persecution of Christians around the world. Instead, it displays an institutionalized obsession with demonizing Israel... The WCC played a key role in bringing about the UN Conference on Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance—the anti-Israel, anti-Jewish meeting convened in Durban, South Africa, a few days before 9/11. WCC representatives demanded that the UN denounce Israel for “systematic perpetration of racist crimes including war crimes, acts of genocide, and ethnic cleansing...” The WCC is particularly influential over progressive Western churches, which subscribe to its advocacy for the world’s poor and dispossessed and which have therefore also absorbed its narrative about Israel. [Commentary Magazine | 'Jesus Was a Palestinian': The Return of Christian Anti-Semitism, Melanie Phillips, June 1, 2014]

We know from experience that the world has many, many Christian believers whose abhorrence of terrorism, rejection of cries for the murder of innocent children, and belief in the central role of justice and morality in 21st century life differ hugely from the messages being advanced by the WCC. We don't share their theological outlook but we feel we have a great deal of common ground with their humanity.

But finding common ground with church leaders for whom calls to prayer and "acts of solidarity" that "restore" to the convicted, unrepentant murderers of innocent children "their freedom with justice and dignity” - that truly feels like mission impossible.

30-May-14: Terrorism raises serious issues that ought to be on the World Council of Churches' agenda but evidently are not

Click for last Friday's post

A week ago, we posted an item that we want to draw now to the attention of people who might not have seen it, or have read it. 

Not for the first time, we are trying to achieve something we feel is constructive, something firmly against terror and those who practice it and encourage it. And we need help from you. The background is at this link: 23-May-14: On the dignity of murderers and their victims: An appeal to Christian friends. 

What we seek is to draw the leadership of the World Council of Churches into an overdue, serious and issues-based discussion. They have ignored our communications with them until now, apart from two relatively perfunctory emails we received from their head of communications (!) It may be that this is something they strongly prefer not to do. But the call by their chief executive a month ago (we described it here: "17-Apr-14: Christian solidarity with unrepentant murderers: where's the outrage?") raises ethical, moral and (yes) religious questions of a serious nature that ought to affect thoughtful Christians no less than other thoughtful people. It's disappointing to see how that discussion is being evaded. 

All support and help is welcome. We are especially hoping to attract the participation and backing of people who worship in the churches affiliated with the WCC. Those worshipers are said to number about half a billion. The names of all the member churches are listed at the bottom of that same blog post, here.

If the president of any other nation state, seeking to take its place
among the members of the international community, were to triumphantly
raise the arms of confessed, unrepentant killers of innocent civilians
as Mahmoud Abbas is doing in this August 14, 2013 UPI photo,
and declared them to be role models for his people's children,
would that raise any ethical and religious issues worth considering? 

    
We view the WCC, for all its problematic position taking, as a serious, respectable and professionally-run organization that speaks in the name of a large part of the world's Christians. As concerned and troubled as we are by public pronouncements that seem to misunderstand terrorism, we are simply an ordinary couple with  no relevant public position. In that sense, we understand the reluctance of the Geneva-base management to trouble themselves. 

But as the parents of a child murdered by ideologically-driven Palestinian Arabs, and as individuals who take an active role in the global community of victims of terror, we feel there is a learning moment here - not just for Israelis, not only for bereaved parents, not merely for people with political axes to grind - for people with mutual understanding, justice, dignity, tolerance and co-existence on their minds.

If you are willing to help us with this, or know people who might, you are invited to make make contact. If the link is not working, the email address here is thisongoingwar@gmail.com 

28-May-14: Rocks, blood-libels and Jerusalem Day

Temple Mount, February 2012: Masked rock throwing "protestors"
are a constant feature of life at the Jewish people's
holiest (and shared) site [Image Source]

Israeli police entered the Temple Mount compound this morning here in Jerusalem and, after an assessment based on the rock-hurling attacks carried out against Jewish visitors to the site over the previous hours, closed it to public access.

Times of Israel reports that

Police entered the compound Wednesday morning after rocks were thrown as the Mughrabi gate opened to visitors. One policeman was lightly injured by a stone... It was the second straight day that clashes were reported on the Temple Mount. On Tuesday, an Israeli police officer was injured when Arabs threw stones at a group of Jews visiting the holy site. Wednesday is Jerusalem Day, when Israeli Jews mark the capture of the Old City from Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War... The Waqf Foundation, which administrates the Temple Mount, charged Tuesday that Israeli nationalists were planning to march through the al-Aqsa compound to mark the holiday. However, the parade will not enter the Temple Mount compound, but rather end at the Western Wall.

An Israel National News report says the rock-throwers wore masks, not an unusual tactic. It says about a thousand non-Israeli tourists visited the site this morning, about four times the number of Israeli visitors, prior to the area's closure.

The Arabic-language website of the Waqf (religious foundation) that claims authority over the Temple Mount in the name of Islam gives prominent coverage at this hour to a report headlined "Occupation besieging al-Aqsa mosque, preventing the entry of worshipers". The Waqf's report avoids all mention of rock-throwing, and shows no photographs of violence other than focusing on the presence of Israeli security forces. It offers this explanation (loosely translated to English) for why there is turmoil on the Temple Mount on this particular day:

Apparently, this blockade and restrictions on the al-Aqsa mosque come in order to create conditions to enable breaking into and desecrating the Al-Aqsa Mosque. A group of 30 settlers has already moved in this morning, guarded by the occupation forces. They were confronted by the presence of worshipers at Al-Aqsa, and the situation is very tense. [iaqsa.com]

That's what concerned Arabic-language readers will know. A more likely, less manipulative explanation for today's rock throwing and the general agitation among segments of Jerusalem's Moslem resident population and visitors comes in a Waqf article from yesterday. There the headline refers, in time-honored fashion, to "settlers" "storming and desecrating" the mosque on Tuesday. 

Inside Al Aqsa Mosque, April 17, 2014 [Image Source: Getty Images]
The rocks have been ready and prepared for some time.

In reality, there was neither storming nor desecrating. Nor was there any breaking in. But there is a long history to provocations like this one emanating from parts of the Arab media.

A 2012 study by Nadav Shragai for the the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, entitled "The 'Al-Aksa Is in Danger' Libel: The History of a Lie" [online here and downloadable in PDF and ebook form] shows how deep its roots are. 

Israel and its institutions, according to the practitioners of this hateful technique

are scheming and striving to destroy the mosques on the Temple Mount and build in their stead the Third Temple. The longer the libel lives, its delusive variants striking root, the more its blind and misled devotees proliferate. The libel is ramifying, taking hold of the academic, religious, and public discourse of the Arab, Palestinian, and Muslim world as if it were pure truth. Absurdly, it strikes at the Jewish people and the State of Israel precisely in the place where the Jewish state has made the most generous gesture, the greatest concession, ever made by one religion to another – on the Temple Mount, the holiest place of the Jewish people and only the third place in importance for the Muslim religion. The libel greatly intensifies fear and hatred between the State of Israel and the Arab world, and between Jews and Muslims all over the world. It also well serves those who initiated it, or in recent decades have carefully cultivated it, and it seems also to offer the best proof of the well-known adage that if a lie is repeated often enough, it is accepted as truth. [Shragai] 

The malicious inventiveness of those pushing the "Al Aqsa is in danger" mantra has covered a broad range of strategies over the decades, starting with the notorious mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini, an associate and honored guest of Adof Hitler, an apostle of the Nazis, an advocate of their extermination plans for the Jews, the man they called “Fuhrer of the Arabic World”, and an uncle of Arafat. Shragai assembles documents, maps, photos and reports covering the past century to throw light on aspects that, if the stakes were not so life-and-death high. might seem funny. 

For instance, the saga of one Mahmoud Abu Samra, described a little improbably as an intelligence officer in one of Yasir Arafat's numerous armed groups, and head of something called the Jerusalem Center for Information, Research and Documentation, ominously warned Arafat in December 2000, very shortly after the Arafat War (aka Second Intifada) was declared, that the nefarious Israelis were working on something really scary. A committee made up of senior scientists from the Technion, the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot and other prominent Israeli centres of research and development, had come up with a plan to destroy the Al-Aqsa mosque. So evil was this plot that it would operate  

without leaving a fingerprint by means of creating an artificial earthquake; using colliding sound waves (which come from outside a wall and push it inward); using the creation of an aerial vacuum; creating artificial local lightning storms... Most of the experiments were conducted already in 1999 under the waters of the Dead Sea and also in the Negev desert. The reports point to the fact that the underground foundation of the mosque has been hollowed out by the Israeli [archeological] excavations. The Zionist experts expect the structure to collapse as a result of damage to the balance between the external air pressure and the internal pressure. I request your guidance and instructions.

In reality, it was the Waqf people who presided over a massive engineering project in 1996-1999 in which the area of the ancient temple site known as Solomon’s Stables was repurposed into a mosque. Their workers excavated an enormous pit in the soil of the Temple Mount causing irreversible archaeological damage. Shragai has pictures.

As we celebrate Jerusalem Day today, the anniversary according to the Jewish people's lunar calendar of the day the city was captured from the occupying Kingdom of Jordan forces in 1967, most Israelis take pride not only at the city's huge progress in those 47 years, but also at the deep commitment in evidence to the protection of religious sites and religious rights for all who come here to worship. 

For anyone with an open-minded standpoint, it's a dramatic contrast to the anti-Jewish exclusionism and narrowness of today's Waqf and of the Jordanite Hashemites who, when they could demonstrate their open-mindedness in the years (1949-1967) in which this city languished under their illegal rule, took every possible measure to prevent Jewish worship and Jewish access, and systematically demolished and desecrated some of Judaism's most sacred objects and places.

We get our share of hostile comments from people unmoved by our views. So for them, we close with some photos of Palestinian Arabs and other Moslem faithful worshiping on the Temple Mount under the watchful protection of Israel's government and military. 

When we pray, Jews face toward the Temple Mount. For Moslems, as important as
Al Aqsa may be to them, the part of their bodies that points toward their holy site
when they prostrate during prayer says something.
Photo taken during month of Ramadan 2009 [Image Source]

Praying on Temple Mount during Ramadan 2012... and facing away
from it [Image Source]

Perhaps it's not paradise. But religious freedom, along with protection of and respect for diverging
religious viewpoints, is a daily reality here in our home city of Jerusalem [Image Source]