The ingrained evangelical supersessionist assumption...

Here.

When left-wing anti-Zionism becomes right-wing antisemitism

Here and here.

The more you ignore him, the closer he gets

Morrissey beats the boycott, here and here.

“See no evil?”: Israel, anti-Zionism, anti-Semitism, and British evangelicals

My article in the most recent edition of the British Messianic Jewish Alliance's Chai magazine is available here

77% of Israeli Arabs would rather live in Israel than in any other country in the world

Here. I don't suppose it's an article which the anti-Zionist left will be making too much of.

Sometimes I almost like Gordon Brown

Here

Just sickening

From THE WALL STREET JOURNAL EUROPE, July 7, 2008

"Iranian calls for the destruction of Israel are almost routine these days. But for a former official of the Islamic Republic to call for the destruction of the Jewish state in the city where the Holocaust was planned adds a repugnant twist – especially as the German government sponsored the event that gave the man from Tehran a Western stage."

Read the rest of it Here

The club of tyranny

Melanie Phillips on the UN's shocking double standards, here

The double Nakba

Irwin Cotler on both 1948 refugee tragedies, here

Letter to Evangelicals Now on behalf of the BMJA

[In response to this review]

Sir,

Many things could be said in response to Alec Motyer's review of Israel, God's Servant by David Torrance and George Taylor in July's EN. However we are particularly troubled by Dr Motyer's assertion that he "still cannot find any 'Jews' in the Old Testament". It is disturbing that a man of Dr Motyer's calibre can make such a statement. It seems to us, from the context of the whole review, that by 'Jews' Dr Motyer does not simply mean "rabbinic Judaism", but that he means "the Jewish nation" as a whole. If he does not find 'Jews' in the Old Testament, whom does he find?

It is a worrying development for Messianic Jews amongst many others to read such statements from a respected leading theologian. We know some will accuse us of being hysterical for bringing up the Holocaust; however the truth is that in Nazi Germany, it became common place for theologians to argue that the characters and writers of the Bible were not Jewish. For example, German Protestants established the Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Church Life, where Jesus himself was turned into an Aryan. A dejudaized hymnbook Grosser Gott Wir Loben Dich was published in 1940 and was commercially successful, followed by Die Botschaft Gottes, a dejudaized New Testament. 100,000 copies of each were published in the first edition. An ethnically-cleansed catechism, Deutsche mit Gott: Ein deutsches Glaubensbuch was also published.

We are sure that Dr Motyer's phrase does not spring from the same hateful motivation and we are not accusing him of antisemitism; it is nevertheless unfortunate. We have members of our Alliance who escaped Nazi Germany who therefore find such comments chilling and deeply offensive - as do we.

Stephen Sizer outdoes himself

Stephen Sizer is a radically anti-Zionist British evangelical, whom I have blogged about previously here, here, here and here. Follow those links and you should get a feel for Sizer's agenda and methodology. Even by his standards, though, the extract below, from an article on his website responding to this blog post by Irene Lancaster, takes some beating:

Regarding the fallacious assertion that Israel was attacked in 1967 – I would refer you to the confessions of Prime Minister Moshe Sharett (in his personal diary), General Mordicai Hod, Commander of the Israeli Air Force, General Haim Herzog, former head of Israeli Military Intelligence and Head of State, and Foreign Minister Abba Eban that Israel precipitated the 1967 war for their own purposes. Israeli’s survival was not at stake. Mordechai Ben-Tov, for example, admitted “The entire story of the danger of extermination was invented in every detail and exaggerated a posteriori, to justify the annexation of new Arab territory.” Similarly, even Menachim Begin admitted, “We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him (Egypt).” [my emphasis]

Yes, Sizer actually claims that Israel's existence was not threatened in the run-up to the 1967 war: a statement with which no serious historian would agree. Consider the following crucial bits of information from Michael Oren's book Six Days of War (Penguin, 2002):

The war decision of the Israeli cabinet, drafted by Dayan and passed by a 12-2 vote, was that

the armies of Egypt, Syria and Jordan are deployed for a multi-front attack that threatens Israel's existence. It is therefore decided to launch a military strike aimed at... preventing the impending assault. (pp157-8). Cf:-

p86: "It is now a question of our national survival" (Yitzhak Rabin)
p87: "The Arab states will interpret Israel's weakness as an excellent oppportunity to threaten her security and her very existence" (Aharaon Yariv)
p134 "The question isn't free passage but the existence of the people of Israel." (Ariel Sharon)

The same book also includes a photograph of Israelis digging trenches in the run up to the war. Presumably Sizer believes this was a cunning Zionist hoax to hoodwink the watching world.

No serious historian would claim that Israel's existence was not at stake in the run-up to the 1967 war. Sizer refers to alleged entries in the diary of Moshe Sharrett but, since Sharret died in 1965, these apparent confessions would seem to require an explanation beyond even Rev Sizer's powers of imagination. Regarding Mordechai Ben-Tov, Sizer omits to mention that he was a Knesset Member for Mapam, a miniscule Stalinist party controlled by the KGB. Ben-Tov was so slavishly loyal to Stalin that he had supported the Doctors Plot:-

"Bentov argued that revolution is cruel by nature, and therefore we must not rush to condemn events such as the infamous Doctors’ Plot, in which nine Russian Jewish doctors were arrested on false charges of plotting to murder top government officials." (See http://www.azure.org.il/magazine/magazine.asp?id=377)

As for the Begin quote, Sizer strangely omits Begin's next sentences: This was a war of self-defence in the noblest sense of the term. The Government of National Unity then established declared unanimously [sic]: we will take the initiative and attack the enemy, drive him back, and thus assure the security of Israel and the future of the nation.*

The selective quotation says a lot about Sizer's ethics and methodology. Why do so many people take him seriously?

[I should say that I sent this material by email to Sizer a few weeks ago. He responded but declined to comment on any of these points.]

* The quote comes from a 1982 Jerusalem Post article. Jerusalem Post's online archive only goes as far back as 1989 but I have a PDF copy of the relevant speech on my computer. If you would like to see it, let me have an email address and I'll send it to you.

Israel shows Britain the way?

It's not often that I come across anything of great interest in The Law Society Gazette (I know this may seem hard to believe), but this article by Joshua Rozenberg caught my attention. It seems that various English law lords and appeals judges have visited Israel's Supreme Court and have met Israeli judges on visits to London. Presumably, this is because English judges feel they might have something to learn from how the Israeli Supreme Court operates, and how it deals with claims brought by campaign groups and residents of the West Bank and Gaza. Something to chew on for those who would like to see a complete exclusion of Israelis from the cultural, academic and legal life of the planet.

Jewish stuff in this month's Evangelicals Now

Alec Motyer reviews Torrance and Taylor's Israel, God's Servant, here. I guess it was as positive a review the book was ever going to get in EN, which is, after all, supersessionist at heart.

There was also an artticle on the recent burning of New Testaments at Yehuda Or, but this article has not been reproduced on EN's website.

More on the boycott movement

The left's hypocrisy over Zimbabwe, here

Eve Garrard (of Keele University) has written a terrific letter of resignation from the Universities and Colleges Union, here. I suspect she won't be the last. "The Union purports to be antiracist: it asserts that 'racism is widespread throughout further and higher education', and that the 'UCU is opposed to race discrimination in whatever form it takes'. But it doesn't seem to be opposed to current race discrimination against Jews (except when it can be safely attributed to Nazis), and it does seem to believe that the UCU itself is entirely free of the racism which it regards as so widespread elsewhere. It appears to be impervious to the possibility that its own practices are open to question under that heading. Its peevish and self-satisfied response to criticism from the All-Party Inquiry into Anti-Semitism was a salutary example of this, as was the Union's flat refusal to meet the OSCE Special Representative on combating anti-Semitism. Its officials declared that they were too busy to meet the Representative. Perhaps Union personnel should announce that they're opposed to race discrimination in whatever form it takes, except when they're really busy. Even when it is pointed out to the Union, in the clearest possible terms, that its proposed actions constitute institutional discrimination against Jews, it is so determined to persist in those actions that it spends very large sums of its members' money trying to find out if there is some way in which it can single out the Jewish state for hostile attention and still remain within the law."

Good news for a change

Boycott hit by a wave of collaborations, here

Jewish Groups welcome Presbyterians' move towards balance, here

The Modern Version of the Blood Libel

Melani Phillips on the Mohammed Al-Dura affair, here

Thoughts on (what some people claim isn't) the boycott campaign

Here.

Messianic Jews say they are persecuted in Israel

Ynet news article, here

Howard Jacobson on the boycott

Have a listen, here - it's about 10 minutes long, funny, and devastatingly brilliant.

UNRWA: Barrier to Peace

(From this site)

UNRWA: Barrier to Peace Jonathan Spyer Perspectives Papers No. 44, May 27, 2008 May 28, 2008 Executive Summary: The United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA) was created under the jurisdiction of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), with the unique responsibility of solely aiding the Palestinians. Due to this special status, the UNRWA perpetuates, rather than resolves, the Palestinian refugee issue, and therefore serves as a major obstacle toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Like no other UN body, UNRWA's definition of refugees includes not only the refugees themselves, but also their descendents. Moreover, refugees keep their status even if they have gained citizenship. UNRWA employs teachers affiliated with Hamas and allows the dissemination of Hamas messages in its schools. The Hamas coup in Gaza of July 2007 has resulted in a Hamas takeover of UNRWA facilities there. Therefore, UNRWA's activities require urgent action. The Agency should be dissolved and its services transferred to more appropriate administering organizations. Background Millions of refugees worldwide - over 130 million since the end of World War II - have come under the responsibility of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which aims to resettle and rehabilitate refugees. On December 8, 1949, the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 302, establishing an agency dedicated solely to "direct relief and works programs" for the Palestinian Arab refugees - UNRWA (United Nations Relief Works Agency) - making it a unique body. UNRWA exists in order to perpetuate, rather than to resolve, the Palestinian refugee issue. No Palestinian has ever lost his or her refugee status. There are hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees and their descendants who are citizens of Jordan, for example - yet as far as UNRWA is concerned they are still refugees, eligible for aid. UNRWA, over the past 60 years, has transformed itself into a central vehicle for the perpetuation of the refugee problem, and into a major obstacle for the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Problem of Definition When UNRWA first began counting refugees in 1948, it did so in a way without precedent - seeking to maximize the number of those defined as refugees. UNRWA counts every descendant of the original refugees as a refugee themselves - leading to an increase of 400 percent in the number since 1948. This was a politically motivated definition to imply that either Palestinians would remain refugees forever or until the day that they returned in a triumph to a Palestinian Arab state that included the territory where Israel existed. If they built lives elsewhere, even after many generations - decades or centuries - they still remained officially refugees. In contrast to other situations around the world, other refugees only retained that status until they found permanent homes elsewhere, presumably as citizens of other countries. Moreover, refugee status was based solely on the applicant's word. Even UNRWA admitted its figures were inflated in a 1998 Report of the Commissioner General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (July 1997-30 June 1998): "UNRWA registration figures are based on information voluntarily supplied by refugees primarily for the purpose of obtaining access to Agency services and hence cannot be considered statistically valid demographic data." Fostering Conflict In October 2004, then UNRWA Commissioner General Peter Hansen publicly admitted for the first time that Hamas members were on the UNWRA payroll, adding, "I don't see that as a crime. Hamas as a political organization does not mean that every member is a militant and we do not do political vetting and exclude people from one persuasion as against another." Consequently, taxpayers' money in countries where Hamas was legally defined as a terrorist organization, like the United States and Canada, was being illegally used to fund Hamas-controlled activities. Hanson's view that Hamas was a normal political organization whose doctrines did not interfere with the governance and education of Palestinians remains the position of UNRWA. This has been so even when Hamas has committed violence against other Palestinians. After the organization seized Gaza by force in July 2007, UNRWA immediately indicated to Hamas that it was eager to get back to providing its services. Nothing was changed in its procedure or performance after the takeover. A graphic demonstration of this issue was the death of Awad al-Qiq in May 2008. Qiq had a long career as a science teacher in an UNRWA school and had been promoted to run its Rafah Prep Boys School. He was also the leading bombmaker for Islamic Jihad. He was killed while supervising a factory to make rockets and other weapons for use against Israel, located a short distance from the school. Qiq was thus simultaneously building weapons for attacking Israeli civilians while indoctrinating his students to do the same. Islamic Jihad did not need to pay him a salary for his terrorist activities. The UN and the American taxpayer were already doing so. The increasing numbers of UNRWA teachers who openly identify with radical groups have created a teachers' bloc that ensures the election of members of Hamas and individuals committed to Islamist ideologies. Using classrooms as a place to spread their radical messages, these teachers have also gravitated to local Palestinian elections. Thus, UNRWA's education system has become a springboard for the political activities of Hamas. For example, Minister of Interior and Civil Affairs Minister Saeed Siyam of Hamas, was a teacher in UNRWA schools in Gaza from 1980 to 2003. He then became a member of UNRWA's Arab Employees Union, and has headed the Teachers Sector Committee. Other notable Hamas graduates of the UNRWA education system include Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and Abd al-Aziz Rantisi, the former Hamas chief. Fostering Dependency UNRWA's budget has been supported by many countries of which the United States and Western countries have been the largest contributors. In 1990, UNRWA's annual budget was over $292 million, and by 2000 it had increased to $365 million. Despite this seemingly significant rise, however, actual allocations among the various refugee camps has decreased - compounded by a very high birth rate and burgeoning camp populations. Refugees were discouraged from moving out and had the incentive of being on welfare if they remained. Per capita spending among refugees in camps thus declined from $200 in services per year per refugee in the 1970s to about $70 currently. This situation has been most evident in Lebanon, where the government provides little if any additional assistance to the Palestinians. UNRWA provides jobs to a large number of Palestinians (it has a full time staff of 23,000). While the UN High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) and the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) avoid employing locals who are also recipients of agency services, UNRWA does not make this distinction. UNRWA thus keeps a large population of refugees and their descendants in a permanent state of welfare dependency, financed by the western taxpayer. In so doing, it acts as a barrier to attempts to make the refugees into productive citizens. Bureaucracies have a tendency to become self-perpetuating. In the case of UNRWA, this tendency is exacerbated by the fact that the organization's raison d'etre is the preserving of a refugee problem, rather than finding a solution for it. Conclusion The UN erred when it created a UN body devoted exclusively to one refugee population and with a modus operandi contradicting that of all other relief institutions. Four steps are required to bring the international approach to the Palestinian refugee issue in line with standard practice on similar situations. First, UNRWA itself should be dissolved. Second, the services UNRWA currently provides should be transferred to other UN agencies, notably the UNHCR, which have a long experience with such programs. Third, responsibility for normal social services should be turned over to the Palestinian Authority. A large portion of the UNRWA staff should be transferred to that governmental authority. Fourth, donors should use the maximum amount of oversight to ensure transparency and accountability. Dr. Jonathan Spyer is a senior research fellow at the Global Research in International Affairs Center at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya Israel.