Who are the EAPPI (Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel)?

EAPPI screen capture - source NGO Monitor

The Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel recently submitted material to an Irish parliamentary committee leading to a recommendation that imports from Jewish West Bank settlements be boycotted. This is a damaging development that may eventually lead to the banning of settlement imports within the European Union.

The EAPPI was founded and continues to be funded by the World Council of Churches (WCC), a large organisation which is a major supporter of demonising boycott campaigns against Israel. The one-sided nature of the WCC’s forceful attacks on Israel, whilst simultaneously ignoring or obfuscating on major issues relating to Israel’s foes, is stark.

The WCC treated Yassir “father of terrorism” Arafat as a true hero of the Palestinian people who apparently even had the interests of Israel at heart! They also support the Palestinian ‘right-of-return’, which would of course destroy Israel itself.

Many commentators have come to the conclusion that the WCC is an anti-Semitic institution such is its obsession with Jewish wrongdoing, whilst being too afraid to even say “boo” to Muslim extremists, many of whom oppress Christians. The WCC could not even muster a vague criticism of the intensive violence in Syria.

The EAPPI is very much a member of the WCC family. It is a highly active pro-Palestinian organisation that brings ‘internationals to the West Bank to experience life under occupation’ for three or four months, and ‘accompany Palestinians and Israelis in their non-violent actions and to carry out concerted advocacy efforts to end the occupation’. Heady firebrand stuff designed to spread prejudicial views on Israel to Christians the world over!

The WCC doesn’t have any equivalent “accompaniment” program to make a “concerted advocacy” for much oppressed Christians in any part of the Islamic world! Natan Sharansky’s 3D test - demonization, double-standards, and delegitimization - comes to mind.

The extent to which the EAPPI twist the truth of the conflict was revealed when a group of its members toured Sderot. They were unimpressed with the consequences of near-daily Gazan rocket fire. "It’s not Hamas’s fault," the tour guide was advised!

As we passed by Sderot homes with newly built bomb-shelters outside, and stood in Sderot’s ‘rocket-proof’ playground complete with concrete caterpillars that children run into when the siren blares, the aggressive questioning continued. […]

I understood that I was speaking to average everyday people who have been presented with a very one-sided view of the Arab-Israeli conflict-so one-sided that it was difficult for most of them to recognize Israel’s right to exist and defend, even when standing right in the heart of a city targeted by unrelenting rocket terror.

Like many pro-Palestinian Christian groups, EAPPI shrouds itself in dovish words of peace. However, the group promotes an extremist stance. It strongly supports BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) campaigning against Israel, which many see as code for destroying the State via advocacy for a one-state (AKA Rwandan) solution. An EAPPI publication called ‘Chain Reaction’ has endorsed illegal acts against Israel, such as destroying Israeli websites, and sit-ins to disrupt Israeli embassies.

Have the EAPPI’s activities made them unpopular with the Christian mainstream? Seemingly not! The group was endorsed by the Church of England’s General Synod this year, prompting a strong response from the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, which made reference to intimidation and expressions of anti-Semitism at the General Synod:

Unsurprisingly its [EAPPI’s] graduates return with simplistic and radical perspectives, giving talks against Israel which do nothing to promote an understanding of the situation in the Middle East, much less promote a peaceful and viable solution to its problems. Members of Jewish communities across the country have suffered harassment and abuse at EAPPI meetings and yet Synod has completely dismissed their experiences.

The Jewish community does not need lessons from the Anglican Church in justice and peace, themes which originated in our tradition. Moreover, to hear the debate at Synod littered with references to ‘powerful lobbies’, the money expended by the Jewish community, ‘Jewish sounding names’ and the actions of the community ‘bringing shame on the memory of victims of the Holocaust’, is deeply offensive and raises serious questions about the motivation of those behind this motion.

Kairos Palestine, and the revisiting of Christian anti-Semitism

It can be argued that the increasing hostility of some Christian organisations toward Israel, and Jewish people more broadly, is an attempt to drive a wedge into a traditional and relatively vocal area of support for the Jewish State. The Kairos Palestine document, a text issued by a group of Palestinian Christians in December 2009, is an exemplar of this phenomenon, and some insight into EAPPI’s motivations can be found in their advocacy of this text.

The Kairos Palestine Document was developed and widely promoted by the WCC through another sister organisation called the Palestine Israel Ecumenical Forum (PIEF), and the text follows similarly problematic documents, namely Bern Perspectives (2008) and the Amman Call (2007).

In essence the Kairos Palestine document reworks long standing anti-Semitic themes that have been used by Christian Arabs to defame Israel. The text doesn’t mention the historic ties between the Jewish people and Israel, and it denies their biblical links as well. It asserts that Israel was created in sin due to post-Holocaust colonial guilt.

According to NGO Monitor, which quotes the document in question:

Kairos Palestine rationalizes, justifies and trivializes terrorism, calling it “legal resistance” stating (in section 1.4)  “Some (Palestinian) political parties followed the way of armed resistance. Israel used this as a pretext to accuse the Palestinians of being terrorists and was able to distort the real nature of the conflict, presenting it as an Israeli war against terror, rather than an Israeli occupation faced by Palestinian legal resistance aiming at ending it.”

The Kairos Palestine text has also been strongly criticised because it resurrects replacement theology, which was a cornerstone of anti-Semitism within the Christian faith for a very long time. This theology is responsible for much of the persecution visited on Jews for over a millennia. Replacement theology or supersessionism replaces mention of the Jews in the Bible, and the promises made to them by God, with that of Christians. Jews (as an analogue of the Israeli nation) become pariahs, rejects of history as having rejected the Son of God. The theology also objects to Israel’s recreation since the divine biblical promise has been transferred to the Christian Church itself, thereby becoming the new Nation of God.

The common refrain that anti-Zionism does not equate with anti-Semitism is nominally true. However, it is used by Palestinian apologists to exonerate all criticism of Israel, no matter how indicative of hate those expressions are. The anti-Semitism of today merely adds an element of refutability, a fashionable highly selective left-wing humanitarianism, to side-step the charge. However, intensely demonising zealotry and supersessionism, which define groups like EAPPI, betrays the malign intent to the sceptic.

Originally published at the New English Review.

Another low point in the BDS Movement



Margaret Novak at the 2012 General Convention of the United Methodist Church held in Florida

Delegates at the recent General Convention of the United Methodist Church (held from the 24^th April to May 4^th, 2012) approved a resolution calling for a boycott of Israeli goods made in the West Bank.

It was to be expected as the United Methodist Church has for some time expressed substantive hostility toward the Jewish State. There was a great deal of hand-wringing over the supposed harm being done to Palestinian Christians due to the “Occupation” but zero concern over the treatment of Palestinian Christians by the Palestinian Authority itself. Nor was there much worry expressed over the systematic cleansing of Christians from the Islamic Middle East, such as the ongoing oppression of Arab Christians in nearby Syria and Egypt, not to mention recent events in Southern Sudan, Mali, Nigeria…

During another anti-Israeli resolution that failed to pass, which sought the divestment of the Church’s stock in three multinational companies that do business with Israel, the sheer bigotry of one speech by a BDS campaigner stood out. The individual in question: One Margaret Novak of the two-man Yellow Stone delegation to the Conference.

Margaret Novak stated to the assembly, without any subsequent censure:

I would just ask us all to imagine we were United Methodists in the 1930s and 40s [and] that our Board of Pensions held stock in the very successful manufacturing firms in Germany that bid and received the bids to manufacture the ovens for the concentration camps.

At what point would we decide it was time to divest?

How much evidence would we ask for before it was time to stop the wholesale destruction of people?

Whilst the comparison of Israeli policies in a conflict zone to the destruction of Jews in the Holocaust is a common defamation of the Jewish State, which doesn’t remotely stand up to any sort of impartial analysis as the condition of the Palestinian populace in the West Bank improved considerably since the so-called “occupation” began in 1967, with their welfare comparing favourably with neighbouring countries, Ms. Novak went one stage further by comparing three modern multinational companies that dared to do business with Israel with the very firms that manufactured the ovens used during the extermination programme known as the Holocaust.

What are these diabolically evil companies from which Ms. Novak sought divestment? Step forward Caterpillar, Hewlett Packard and Motorola! Ye ebil be responsible for the slaughter of the Palestinians!

It would be an exaggeration to describe Ms. Novak’s assertion as a new nadir in the BDS Movement since activists for that very cause routinely engage in blood libel, for example the aggressive year-long protests in Australia against a Jewish-Israeli chocolatier that featured the signature chant “There’s blood in your hot chocolate”.

Nonetheless, such a statement of moral equivalence represents an interesting insight into the extreme moral depravity of those involved in BDS campaigning, their extremist stances, and frequent attacks on any sort of positive collaboration between Israeli’s and Palestinians. In totality it points to the fact that BDS campaigners do not seek a just solution to the conflict but rather wish to perpetuate it until Israel’s destruction.

Ms. Novak played the BDS Movement’s signature tune that slanders Israel with Holocaust imagery. It is a rather ironic thing to do. Despite their claims that BDS(M) is based on the boycott of Apartheid South Africa, it actually has its origins in the anti-Semitic Arab economic boycott of Israel, which was initiated several years before the Jewish State was born, mere months after the atrocities of the Holocaust were revealed to the world.

The policy of the Arab League was based on an older Arab boycott of Jewish businesses, which started circa 1920. In various guises it became a critical element in achieving within a few decades an effective Judenrein of the Middle East. Interestingly, similar boycotts were instituted in other parts of the world at the same time, not merely the Judenboykott of 1930’s Nazi Germany. These boycotts were driven by nothing other than naked unabashed anti-Semitism. Today same the strategy is ennobled with a fashionable humanitarianism but the behaviour of those involved reveals its true intent.



This article was also published at Crethi Plethi.

Postscript

I thought it was important to note Ms. Novak's status in the United Methodist Church as it further indicates her extreme opinions are representative of elements within the institution. David Fischler, a Presbyterian Church pastor noted in the comments section of this article:

...this woman isn't just some run-of-the-mill kook. She has been on the United Methodist Commission on Communications for years, been vice president, and is one of the most important laypeople in her annual conference and the Western Jurisdiction. When she spoke, lots of people knew her as a leading UM layperson, and not just a nut who got elected to GC because nobody else was willing to go (she was, in fact, the only lay delegate from Yellowstone AC).

Jesus Christ: The (politically correct) Way

A widely syndicated article by Reuters — a rather daft non-news piece about a feminist ultra politically correct effort to rewrite the story of Jesus as an androgynous girl, by the similarly androgynous Kristen Wolf raises a number of important ethical questions about the media today. To quote the article:

Decades later, after… studying the Bible and mythology, as well as reading retellings of once-male stories from a female point of view, Wolf thought there was a need for a new take on the Biblical tale of the Messiah… The result was the story of Anna, a tomboy in ancient Palestine whose androgynous appearance leads to her being disguised as a boy and sold to shepherds.

This “story” not only changes of gender of Jesus Christ but evidently appears to disassociate the ancient Christian links with Judaism by citing a female-only cult living by an ancient philosophy.

Captured and taught by a group of women who live according to an ancient philosophy, she tries to spread their teachings to ordinary people.

Regardless of one’s belief in the truth of Jesus Christ being the Son of God, the work relativises the figure of Jesus to that of a myth with no genuine historic content:

Wolf said that she didn’t want to be critical of any religion, but instead sought to tap into one of the major stories still told in modern society — just from a slightly different angle.

“The stories need to be dusted off and re-invigorated. My intention was to create a new story that we tell differently, that brings out the timelessness of this story, this person Jesus,” she said.

Whilst no religion should be given exclusive domain over the control of ideas appertaining to works upon which its faith are based, questions could nonetheless be asked about the intent of promoting an ultra politically correct revisionist book, which would no doubt be disturbing or offensive to many Christians across the globe. It would be difficult to conceive of the media doing anything remotely similar with a book that challenges the established orthodoxy of Islam, even in a work of fiction.

Questions could be asked as to why a major international media institution would seek to broadcast this book around the world. Clearly the free publicity of a syndicated international story would be immense.

What is it that causes the media to take the unusual step of promoting such a book in this fashion?

The answer may lie in established social trends that originated in moral relativism and cultural changes especially from the 1960s onward. At the root of these developments is a hostility towards Judeo-Christianity and the West itself, leading to a deep emotive romanticisation of all that is alternative, and non-western. This is an undercurrent in academia that reveals itself in subtle and sometimes overt ways. Truth is diminished and seen as something that ought to be overcome in the pursuit of a certain ideal, a notion advanced by academics and philosophers like Richard Rorty. Indeed Wolf cites her time in academia as a major source of inspiration for the book.

In keeping with the effort to subsume the truth in the name of achieving political goals, the piece continues the disturbing trend of calling the region of ancient Israel and Judea “Palestine”. In fact it is a quite well known historic fact that Hadrian actually renamed Judea as “Syria Palaestina” in 135 AD in an effort to disenfranchise the Jews of their homeland as part of a great effort to root them out of the area, after the Simon Bar Kokhba revolt of 132–135 AD against the occupation of the Roman Empire, which trampled on their rights. The Romans brutally crushed the revolt, killing in excess of half a million Jews, prohibited Torah law, the Hebrew calendar, destroyed precious religious objects, and Jews were forbidden from entering their capital.

The name change was intended as a mockery as it related to the Philistines, an ancient enemy of the Jews that disappeared from history more than 600 years previously. The new moniker was part of the gradual process of erasing the Jewish presence from Judea which was considered troublesome. Ironically the strategy has found new expression after Arafat adopted the Palestinian moniker for local Arab peoples as a propagandistic stunt, and even labelled Jesus the first Palestinian terrorist! For people to use that name for an era when it was not historically applicable reinforces the myth that the Jews have no meaningful tie with Israel.

In the case of “The Way”, it is clear the author similarly intends to set forth a new myth for political reasons. To quote the FAQ on the author’s own website:

Years later, my youthful discontent would mix with a variety of influences — my own personal experiences, college studies with Jesuits, independent study of prehistoric cultures, mythology, ancient and modern spiritual traditions, and the leading-edge scholarship that had uncovered efforts throughout history to remove the feminine from the spiritual domain.

Having felt the negative impacts of living under a religion that sets the male higher than the female, and having seen the disastrous effects such an imbalanced belief system has on humanity, our world, and all of creation, I decided to try and instigate change.

Whilst identified as fiction, the book’s unusual purpose, other than simply to tell a story, is repeatedly affirmed in the article and on her website. It is clearly intended to become a sort of liberal-left political myth, bizarrely intended to be utilised in the same way as the old version of the story of Jesus Christ:

The New Testament also depicts Jesus as a revolutionary, but there is no account of where he would have learned his revolutionary, counter-culture philosophies. Moreover, in the biblical texts, there is no mention or record of him from age twelve when he appears at the Temple to age thirty when he begins his ministry. It is therefore conceivable that during his Missing Years, he encountered and studied a spiritual philosophy that was highly different from, even opposed to, the prevailing one. This is the possibility that THE WAY explores.

THE WAY is, at its heart, an attempt to breathe new life into our collective mythology, our collective conscience. It is a tale that asks, “If it were thought possible that one of history’s greatest spiritual leaders had been female, how might women and men feel differently about themselves, one another, and the world?”

The Way is another manifestation of the sometimes bizarre credo that academia and the mainstream media pushes onto the world, as illustrated in an extract from Peter Sissons’ recent book about the BBC. The unjustified assumptions at the core of this broad liberal-left movement have taken on the demeanour of a religion as many have observed, where it can be near impossible to address controversial truths without very severe censure. A prevalent example is having any criticism of Islam labelled “Islamophobic” or “racist”, whether justified by facts or not. Accordingly, all Western values, be they good or bad, have been undermined.

In this respect, it is entirely appropriate for the media to advance a book like The Way, for it represents a religious mythology intended to advance the values of a near religious but ironically secular ideology.


This article is also posted at http://www.crethiplethi.com/jesus-christ-the-politically-correct-way/media/2011/