• Last week, Hamas received an offer that no sane entity would turn down. The offer did not come from Hamas’s allies in Iran and the Islamic world. The offer, to turn the impoverished Gaza Strip into “the Singapore of the Middle East,” came from Israel.

  • ---

• “The Gazans must understand that Israel, which withdrew from the Gaza Strip to the last millimeter, is not the source of their suffering — it is the Hamas leadership, which doesn’t take their needs into consideration… The moment Hamas gives up its tunnels and rockets, we’ll be the first to invest.” — Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman.
• Hamas does not want a new “Singapore” in the Middle East. Hamas wants Israel to disappear from the face of the earth. The welfare of the Palestinians living under its rule is the last thing on the mind of Hamas. The dispute is not about improving the living conditions of Palestinians, as far as Hamas is concerned. Instead, it is about the very existence of Israel.
• Hamas deserves credit for one thing: its honesty concerning its intentions to destroy Israel and kill as many Jews as possible. Hamas does not want 40,000 new jobs for the unemployed poor Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. It would rather see these unemployed Palestinians join its ranks and become soldiers in the jihad to replace Israel with an Islamic empire.

• It seems as if in the minds of David Miller, Kevin MacDonald and Hilary Aked, a mysterious Jewish cabal is responsible for all the world’s ills.

  • ---

• Even Tony Blair, Miller argues, is in league with a sinister “international network” of Israeli settlers and American “Islamophobes.”
• “A liberal Muslim is their trussed-up version of the enemy, the alien, the ‘other’.” — Nick Cohen, journalist.
• Hilary Aked describes moderate Muslims as “native informants.” She also believes that a hidden Jewish network is responsible for the “Islamophobia industry.” She has frequently written for a Qatari-funded media group that is accused by Egyptian newspapers of being a Muslim Brotherhood front group.
• Electronic Intifada is a prominent pro-Hamas publication, whose founder, Ali Abunimah, describes Palestinian leaders who talk with Israel as “collaborators.”
• To fund his obsession with the “propaganda” ostensibly spread by Jews and anti-Islamist Muslims, Miller has received grants from the Economic and Social Research Council, a body funded by the British government. In 2012, Miller received £400,000 from the Council, as well as grants from groups affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.

From his office at the University of Bath, David Miller, an academic and writer, researches organizations and activists that he believes, in his words, work to “distort public debate and undermine democracy.”

The results of this research, done with the help of his students and assembled into detailed profiles of the shadowy figures behind this lobbying, are published across a number of websites run by Miller, including PowerBase and SpinWatch.

A visitor to these websites will quickly note one particular constant: a vast number of Miller’s profiles focus on Jews and Muslims who are working to fight extremism and terrorism.

Counter-terrorism groups, “neocons” and various political organizations are all accused of belonging to a “covert propaganda operation” for various Jewish organizations. Even Tony Blair, Miller argues, is in league with a sinister “international network” of Israeli settlers and American “Islamophobes.”

As one blogger notes, any of Miller’s “fellow academics” who do not present strong convictions against Israel, are “smeared… as neocons.”

Shiraz Maher, a counter-terrorism expert, has written: “Despite the ‘close to ten thousand’ entries on SpinProfiles [another Miller project] you will find nothing on [Islamist pressure] groups. … The problem is with SpinProfile’s apparent obsession with ‘Jewish power’ or, if you will, ‘the Jewish lobby’.”

At a recent conference organized by Miller, American academic Deepa Kumar denounced Muslims working to combat extremism and terrorism within their communities as “native informants.” And as the journalist Nick Cohen observed: “For the religious [Islamic] right and the political and academic left, a liberal Muslim is their trussed-up version of the enemy, the alien, the ‘other’.”

Another David Miller site, Neocon Europe (now defunct), published the works of Kevin MacDonald, a prominent white supremacist who claims that Jews control the media and politicians to “transform the country to serve their interests.” In a list entitled, “characteristics of Jewish intellectual movements,” MacDonald has claimed that Jews “form a cohesive, mutually reinforcing core” that has “access to prestigious and mainstream media sources, partly as a result of Jewish influence on the media.”

Other conspiracy theories promoted on Miller’s websites include those of Miller’s colleague, Idrees Ahmed, who claims that the Darfur crisis has been prolonged by a powerful Jewish lobby.

In 2009, David Miller provided accommodation for Joel Kovel, an anti-Jewish American academic who has written that, “The Holocaust has been repressed from history and converted into moral capital to cover and justify whatever the Jewish people would do in the way of domination themselves, whether this be the pell-mell immersion in American bourgeois life or the policies of Israel.”

David Miller and his network also work with Muslim Brotherhood operatives. In 2009, Miller secured taxpayer funding to run a project examining British Islam in collaboration with Osama Saeed, a Muslim Brotherhood activist. Saeed was previously the spokesperson for the Muslim Association of Britain, the main organization for the Muslim Brotherhood in Britain. In 2005, Saeed called for the re-establishment of the Islamic caliphate; and in 2006, Saeed expressed praise for the late Al Qaeda leader Anwar Al-Awlaki.

Miller’s protégés include Hilary Aked, a blogger with a strong interest in British Jewish groups. Aked apparently believes that a hidden Jewish network is responsible for the “Islamophobia industry,” and that there is a distinct “overlap between Islamophobia and Zionism.” She also describes moderate Muslims as “native informants.”

Deepa Kumar (left) and Hilary Aked (right) condemn moderate Muslims as “native informants.”

Aked is published at the online publication, Electronic Intifada, where she writes about “pro-Israel” infiltration of the media, and that pro-Israel conferences are part of a secretive “transnational Islamophobia industry.”

Electronic Intifada is a prominent pro-Hamas publication, whose founder, Ali Abunimah, has described Palestinian leaders who talk with Israel as “collaborators,” and claims that, “supporting Zionism is not atonement for the Holocaust, but its continuation in spirit.”

Aked has also frequently written for Al Araby Al Jadeed, a Qatari-funded media group that is accused by Egyptian newspapers of being a Muslim Brotherhood front group. Al Araby‘s editor-in-chief, Wael Qandil, is described by the Arab newspaper Al Arabiya as a prominent supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood.

To fund his obsession with the “propaganda” ostensibly spread by Jews and anti-Islamist Muslims, Miller has received grants from the Economic and Social Research Council, a body funded by the British government. In 2012, Miller received £400,000 ($614,000 USD) from the Council.

Miller’s projects have also received funding from a number of Islamist groups tied to the Muslim Brotherhood and the terror group, Hamas, including:

• £2000 from Interpal, a British charity closely linked to Hamas. Interpal’s leaders regularly attend Hamas rallies and ceremonies in the Gaza strip. Interpal trustee Essam Yusuf even participated in a song that praised Hamas’s terrorist activities and its “martyrs.” Another Interpal trustee, Ibrahim Hewitt, has written of a “so-called Holocaust,” and claims: “The Jews cannot be entrusted with the sanctity and security of this Holy Land.”
• £10,000 from Friends of Al Aqsa, an organization founded by Ismail Patel, who told a crowd in 2009 that, “Hamas is no terrorist organization. The reason they hate Hamas is because they refuse to be subjugated, occupied by the Israeli state, and we salute Hamas for standing up to Israel.”

Friends of Al Aqsa has published writings of prominent anti-Semites, including the Palestinian journalist Khalid Amayreh, whose submission claimed that Jews control America, and that the Iraq war “was conceived in and planned by Israel through the mostly Jewish neocons in Washington.”

• A total of £15,000 from the Cordoba Foundation, a lobbying group led by senior Muslim Brotherhood official, Anas Al-Tikriti. Prime Minister David Cameron has described the Cordoba Foundation as a “political front for the Muslim Brotherhood.”
• £5000 from Middle East Monitor, a Muslim Brotherhood online publication. Its editor, Daud Abdullah, was a signatory to the Istanbul Declaration, a document that called for attacks on British troops and Jewish communities.In 2011, Middle East Monitor brought the Hamas activist Raed Saleh to speak in Britain. Saleh has claimed (falsely) that 4000 Jews skipped work at the World Trade Center on 9/11 and that those who killed the “Martyr, Sheikh Osama Bin Laden” had “sold their consciences to Satan.” David Miller is, in fact, a vocal supporter of Raed Saleh, and spoke in defence of Saleh at a court deportation hearing.

It seems as if in the minds of David Miller, Kevin MacDonald and Hilary Aked, a mysterious Jewish cabal is responsible for all the world’s ills. Jewish money is supposedly the nexus between “Islamophobia,” Western colonialism, terrorism and violent foreign policy.

That such views find a platform in academia — and any funding by governments — is, and probably should be, seriously troubling.

Anti-Jewish tropes have been the foundation of conspiracy theories for centuries. The ideas of Miller, MacDonald and Aked are not new, but they remain racist, xenophobic and false.

• That a serious Christian can place political agreement with an intransigent enemy before the simple morality of calling for an immediate end to terrorism beggars belief.

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• Given that the Palestinians refuse to recognize Israel or the rights of the Jewish people, the Pope’s recognizing a state of Palestine seems a contradictory gesture. By making this badly-thought-out choice, the Vatican simply encourages the Palestinians in their conviction that their tactics of violence, rejection of peace offers and glorification of terrorists and suicide bombers across their towns and villages is, regardless of all morality and prudent policy, the right course of action.

• If morality is at stake, it will also enthuse them to continue with the lies about Jews, hate videos, hate preaching, false historicism, and school textbooks and TV shows that teach children to despise Jews as “sons of apes and pigs.” Is that what the Vatican really wants? Is that a goal remotely in keeping with the wishes of Pope Francis?

• “Christian children are massacred, and everything is done in plain sight. Islamists proclaim on a daily basis that they will not stop until Christianity is wiped off the face of the earth. So are the world Christian bodies denouncing the Islamic forces for the ethnic cleansing, genocide and historic demographic-religious revolution their brethren is [sic] suffering? No. Christians these days are busy targeting the Israeli Jews. The Pope, who should represent the voice of one billion Catholics around the world, was not busy these days in writing an encyclical against the Islamic persecution of Christians. No, the Catholic Church was very busy in signing a historic agreement with the “State of Palestine,” a non-existent entity which, if it (God forbid) should be created, would be the first state after the Nazi Germany to officially ban the Jews and expel the remnant of its Christians.” – Giulio Meotti, journalist.

• One might safely assume that Jesus would never have approved of Palestinian anti-Semitism, the preaching of bilious hatred, or the infliction of violence on innocent followers of the community to which he himself and his mother belonged.

• According to Jerusalem Post columnist Max Samarov, “In a defining moment, UCC [United Church of Christ] officials rejected an amendment calling on the church to listen to Israeli perspectives and encourage cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians.” Clearly, a search for truth and an openness to dialogue form no part of the UCC’s agenda.

When the Vatican recognized a self-proclaimed “State of Palestine” on June 22, 2015, it not only defied international law — there is no such state to recognize — it acted immorally in religious terms.

In July, the Holy See praised the controversial nuclear deal between Iran and several Western states and said it viewed the agreement in “a positive light.” According to theCatholic News Agency, Bishop Oscar Cantu of New Mexico stated, applying a logic that defies understanding, that “Iran’s hostility to its neighbors in the Middle East is all the more reason for the international agreement on its nuclear program.” The agreement will allow Iran to acquire as many nuclear bombs as it likes after ten years, or sooner, plus the intercontinental ballistic missiles to deliver them to America.

Pope Francis rightly declares himself to be a man of peace, a religious pontiff and statesman dedicated to an end to violence everywhere on the globe, especially in the Middle East and North Africa, where fanaticism and slaughter are almost ubiquitous.

But why, then, would the Vatican, a city-state ruled by the Pope, give recognition to a would-be state that for over 67 years has been dominated by war and terrorism? The would-be state is also, according to a 2014 Anti-Defamation League poll, the most anti-Semitic in the world, with a political consensus that calls for the killing or expulsion of Jews. In current Palestinian theory, this slaughter would lead to the eradication of Israel and its replacement by an irredentist “State of Palestine,” which, in its turn, would quickly be transformed into a fundamentalist jihad state.

To be fair, Pope Francis himself has said (in an e-mail to Portuguese-Israeli journalist Henrique Cymerman) that “Whoever does not recognize the Jewish People and the State of Israel falls in anti-Semitism.” But given that the Palestinians refuse to recognize Israel or the rights of the Jewish people, recognizing a state of Palestine seems a contradictory gesture.

By making this badly-thought-out choice, the Vatican simply encourages the Palestinians in their conviction that their tactics of violence, rejection of peace offers (however generous), and glorification of terrorists and suicide bombers across their towns and villages is, regardless of all morality and prudent policy, the right course of action. And if morality is at stake, it will also enthuse them to continue with the clutter of lies about Jews, hate videos, myth-making, hate preaching, false historicism, and the use of school textbooks and TV shows that teach children to despise Jews as “sons of apes and pigs.” Is that what the Vatican really wants? Is that a goal remotely in keeping with the wishes of Pope Francis?

According to Italian journalist Giulio Meotti, the Vatican has been engaged in a deliberate coldness towards Israel since the emergence of Zionism at the end of the 19^th century and the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948. He has advanced this argument at length in his 2013 study The Vatican Against Israel: J’Accuse. In a short article dated July 3, 2015, Meotti expands this argument. He does so by pointing out the shocking disparity in what so many churches do by focussing on Israel instead of acting to defend their own coreligionists in the Middle East.

Christianity is dying in Syria and Iraq. Christian churches are demolished, Christian crosses are burned and replaced with flags of the Islamic State, Christian houses are destroyed, entire Christian communities are displaced, Christian children are massacred, and everything is done in plain sight. Islamists proclaim on a daily basis that they will not stop until Christianity is wiped off the face of the earth.

So are the world Christian bodies denouncing the Islamic forces for the ethnic cleansing, genocide and historic demographic-religious revolution their brethren is [sic] suffering? No. Christians these days are busy targeting the Israeli Jews.

The Pope, who should represent the voice of one billion Catholics around the world, was not busy these days in writing an encyclical against the Islamic persecution of Christians. No, the Catholic Church was very busy in signing a historic agreement with the “State of Palestine,” a non-existent entity which, if it (God forbid) should be created, would be the first state after the Nazi Germany to officially ban the Jews and expel the remnant of its Christians.

We should pause here to ask why the Catholic Church has moved in this direction. It is, in part, a legacy of its centuries-old anti-Semitism, something that existed officially until the Second Vatican Council between 1962 and 1965, specified in Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Nostra Aetate, beginning in article 4 with the words, “As the sacred synod searches into the mystery of the Church, it remembers the bond that spiritually ties the people of the New Covenant to Abraham’s stock.” Unofficially, however, that underlying anti-Semitism continues, and nowhere more visibly than in the modern Catholic embrace of Marxist, socialist, postmodernist and other theories and — crucially — praxis, the putting into action of philosophical, theological or ideological ideas.

Although a concept with a long history in philosophy, praxis in the modern period has a particular association with Marxist thought. This strand, which has a marked influence on the Church even at the highest levels, is rooted in the beliefs of Liberation Theology, an approach to Christian practice that emerged in Latin America after the 1950s and has since spread worldwide. In its essential principles, Liberation Theology is rooted in genuine Christian belief, linked to the message of Jesus in his sermon known as the Beatitudes. It is “an interpretation of Christian faith out of the experience of the poor… an attempt to read the Bible and key Christian doctrines with the eyes of the poor”.[1]

In Latin America and some other places, however, this “option for the poor” embraced support for “liberation” movements, even violent ones. It is this that has led many Catholics to support the Palestinians in their struggle not just for “liberation” from Israeli so-called “occupation” but for the replacement of Israel by a wider Palestinian state — one that is being eyed for a new “occupation” by terrorists such as Hamas and ISIS.

Today, there are many forms of Liberation Theology, from Brazilian to Black to Feminist. There is even a Palestinian version supported by many Palestinian Christians and by pro-Palestinians abroad. Many Liberation theologians seem to have been deeply influenced by Marxist and socialist theory, and for this reason the Church originally rejected it. Over the years, however, there has been a growing shift towards similar approaches. General Ion Mihai Pacepa, formerly of the Romanian secret police, has claimed (with perhaps some exaggeration) that Liberation Theology was created by the Soviet Union, specifically by the KGB, meaning that it was part of a wider campaign to undermine the capitalist system in the West. Western “fellow travellers” who unwittingly furthered Soviet policies in Europe and North America were to be joined by unwitting theologians and laypeople.

If that is correct, it has certainly left a mark. Christian Communist Liberation Theology dates back as far as the work of Father Thomas J. Hagerty, a priest from New Mexico and a co-founder of Industrial Workers of the World in the late 19^th and early twentieth centuries. It continues down to the present day. A more focussed version of this is the movement known as Christians on the Left (since 2013), formerly the Christian Socialist Movement from the 1960s. Non-denominational, it is allied to the British Labour Party’s left, is politically active, and seeks to “change the system” in order to make society more open to socialist political approaches.

Within the Catholic Church, a shift has taken place. Apparently recognizing that many of the goals of priests and laymen involved in work for social justice, help for the poor, assistance for minorities, freedom for slaves, and liberation for the oppressed are entirely above reproach, the Vatican has come to accept the nobly well-intended — but often sorely misrepresented — vision of supporting the poor that it had previously, and often perceptively, condemned.

The first sign of this came after 1971, during the reign of Pope Paul VI, who had previously rejected Marxist commitment to work in the world to alleviate suffering through political action. His views softened and he moved the Church in a less conservative direction.

After him, Popes John Paul II, Benedict, and the current Pope, Francis I, came to the position that the Catholic concept of solidarity (in which believers must value all human beings as individuals) was close to the Marxist idea of putting theory into social practice. This change is expressed clearly by Professor Edward Martin and Mateo Pimentel:

The Catholic Church advocates worker participation and contribution in economic matters as a solution to poverty, worker alienation, and exploitation. Such is the case in Marxist and socialist praxis. In this development, Marxist theory and analysis has become a significant part of the Church’s critiques of social and economic relationships and its support of human rights, in identifying the causes of poverty and injustice.

To the extent that this alignment of Marxism and Catholic tradition truly does effect the alleviation of suffering, it can only be commended. But sometimes radical political views about poverty that are misrepresented and badly implemented can lead well-meaning Christians ­– Catholic or not — into adopting political views that might be less commendable and even lead to injustice.

Foremost in this hijacking of values is the way in which so many Christian churches and NGOs have been led to prioritize hatred for Israel and support for Palestinian “resistance.” In doing so, they act under many illusions created by the Palestinians and their socialist and communist (and often Jew-hating) allies, who prey on the hearts and consciences of people of faith: That Israel is an “apartheid state,” that Israeli settlements in Judaea and Samaria are illegal under international law, that Israeli occupation of the West Bank is illegal, that Israel deliberately commits war crimes against the Palestinians, and much more. If any of these allegations were true, a Christian response would be wholly understandable. But Christians, like many others, often choose to accept whatever lies the enemies of Israel churn out, without using scepticism, cross-checking information or even exercising common sense.

At an anti-Israel Christian conference some years ago, a representative of the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme spoke eloquently for half an hour about the evils of Israeli checkpoints and the damage they did (in an “apartheid” way, of course) to Palestinian victims. It did not once occur to her that there might have been quite a different reason for the presence of checkpoints: the extent to which Palestinians in the past (and even now) have crossed into Israel to blow up innocent Jews and Arabs, shoot them, or knife them. Having experienced many checkpoints in Northern Ireland during the Troubles there, it seemed blindingly obvious to me why Israel would want to protect its citizens in this way. And it should have been obvious to a Christian of good will to see that the prevention of death and injury is more important than the minor inconvenience of waiting in a queue. Yet it was not obvious at all.

Rifat Odeh Kassis, co-author and general coordinator of the World Council of Churches (WCC) Kairos Palestine initiative, former head of the WCC’s Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel, and Special Adviser to the WCC’s General Secretary, is pictured above giving an interview to Al-Manar TV, the official TV channel of Lebanon’s Hezbollah terrorist organization. (Photo source: Kairos Palestine)

If we pass on from Catholicism to other Christian churches, organizations and NGOs, there seem to be a great many that constantly berate Israel and defend the Palestinians, whatever either side says or does.

One might safely assume that Jesus would never have approved of Palestinian anti-Semitism, the preaching of bilious hatred, or the infliction of violence on innocent followers of the community to which he himself and his mother belonged, not to mention the believers who followed him.

Many Christians have transformed themselves into deeply biased political activists, as much influenced by the anger of Marxist theory as by the teachings of the Gospels. Others, like the movement Sabeel, work at the theological level, stripping Jews of their rights as a people whose identity is derived from a belief in God, a community of people, many of whom believe they have been invested with a deep responsibility to perform tikkun olam, the “repairing of the world.” In other words, Jews are single out for abuse despite the fact they were the earliest exponents of social action in the real world, not the next. There is a high level of hypocrisy when Christians who work to repair the world in their way condemn the actions of Israel, a country that has visibly improved the lives of millions.

The view of Christians like Sabeel, who are motivated by the outdated theological doctrine of supersessionism (that the Jews are no longer a people of God and have been replaced in God’s eyes by the Christians) is troubling, yet their message chimes with the views of their fellow believers in many places. Beneath that theological façade, however, unfortunately lurks a very real body of incipient or actual anti-Semitism.

The modern period has seen this concern for social activism grow, especially among younger evangelicals.[2]

One well-known evangelical is former US president Jimmy Carter, whose support for the Palestinian cause has been well documented. His 2006 book Peace Not Apartheid has been widely applauded by Palestinians, but deeply criticized by the former head of the Carter Center, Kenneth Starr, who resigned because of the book’s countless factual errors and lies that he lamented Carter refused to correct. The book was also strongly criticized by Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League (in The Deadliest Lies, chapter 5) and others. Carter states that the Palestinians should only end “the suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism when international laws and the ultimate goals of the Roadmap for Peace are accepted by Israel” — in contravention of the Oslo Accords, in which both parties agreed to negotiate a peace.

That a serious Christian can place political agreement with an intransigent enemy before the simple morality of calling for an immediate end to terrorism beggars belief. Yet Carter is not alone.

Christian political activists work for the most part through NGOs, covering their views and actions under the allure of goodwill to all men or a vocation of reconciliation. To the extent that they want peace, they are to be congratulated. But all too often, the sorry truth seems to be that their choice is to subvert a fair and just peace by advocating the “Palestinian solution” — namely, the use of violent and potentially genocidal methods to defeat, expel and ideally slaughter the Jews. This gives cause for the gravest concern.

Not only that, but the views of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and possibly a majority of Palestinians (and certainly their leadership) are based on strict adherence to Islamic shari’a law, which maintains that any territory, once conquered, must belong to the Islamic political theocracy in perpetuity. Any such territory, if it should escape from Muslim hegemony (as happened in Spain, Portugal and India) must be brought back within the fold by subterfuge or, if necessary, violence — a plan that will inevitably lead to disastrous consequences for Christians, Jews, and other non-Muslims.

How thoroughly ironic is it then, that Christians who support Palestinian irredentism thereby endorse the application of a legal system that claims to have superseded all others, especially the judicial norms of Christian countries.

Adherence to shari’a norms also constitutes a slap in the face to modern international law, to the principles of the Enlightenment, and to the Christian ethics of tolerance, fairness, and the pursuit of truth.

According to the Dutch scholar Rudolph Peters, the Islamic version of international law is based entirely on the existing laws governing jihad: whatever is inside shari’a law is legal, whatever is outside shari’a law is not. If another legal system (national or international) contradicts shari’a rulings, then it is deemed illegal. Hence, UN resolutions, the mandate system of the League of Nations, and any number of treaties are regarded as invalid by radicals in Hamas, Islamic Jihad, ISIS, al-Qaeda and other organizations. Why would Christian churches, in their pursuit of peace, want to endorse that? No doubt they will say they do not, even as they turn the other cheek to the terrorists who now are slaughtering and enslaving Christians across the Middle East.

Ironically, those who support the Palestinians do support shari’a law — by default — as Hamas and other Palestinian groups cite jihad as their reason for being. According to Article 13 of the Hamas Charter (the Mithaq Harakat al-Islamiyya al-Filastiniyya), for instance, “there is no solution to the Palestinian problem except through jihad” (la hall li’l-qadiyya al-filastiniyya illa bi’l-jihad).

More than that, overt Christian support for Islamic intolerance and war constitutes an outright denial of their own scriptures. Regardless of what the Qur’an really says, many devout Muslims, including Palestinians, consider the Old and New Testaments to have been misinterpreted or, at worst, falsified by Jews and Christians. More than that, this doctrine (known as tahrif) has allowed Palestinian preachers and intellectuals to overturn the entire narrative of the Tanakh, the Jewish Bible. They do this by claiming that they themselves are the real descendants of an ancient Palestine, dating back many thousands or even tens of thousands of years. The corollary is that there was never any Jewish presence there at all, no land of Israel, no people of Israel. They maintain there was never a first or second Jewish Temple, that other Jewish shrines — such as the Cave of the Patriarchs (Ma’arat Ha-Machpelah) in Hebron — are really Muslim shrines, and that the prophesied return of the Jews to the Holy Land is false. Now, to be frank, this contradicts many verses in the Qur’an and other early Islamic writings as much as it flies in the face of all sound historical texts and archaeological evidence. Even a ten-year-old child can see clearly just how falsified the Palestinian narrative of its origins is.

There seems to be no let-up in Christian-inspired actions against Israel. On June 30 this year, the United Church of Christ (UCC), a socially liberal million-strong protestant denomination in the United States, voted 508 to 124 in favour of divestment and boycott, with 38 abstentions. It was one of two resolutions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict debated by the church. The resolution that called the actions of Israel, in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, “acts of apartheid,” received 51% of the vote, but it failed to reach the two-thirds majority it needed to be passed. Had it been passed, the UCC would have been the first American church to describe Israeli behaviour as apartheid.

According to Jerusalem Post columnist Max Samarov, “during the UCC conference, when a dissenting speaker lamented that the UCC ‘did not allow’ mainstream Jews and Israelis to have a voice at the table, few voters seemed to care. In a defining moment, UCC officials rejected an amendment calling on the church to listen to Israeli perspectives and encourage cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians.” Clearly, a search for truth and an openness to dialogue form no part of the UCC’s agenda, which remains opposed to any initiatives outside their rigidly enforced political dogma. And all this in the United States, a country built on democratic standards.

This vote was in keeping with two earlier resolutions against Israel, such as one that called for Israel to tear down its anti-terror security barrier with the West Bank — but without asking the Palestinians to cease their terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians. That a Christian church should call for an act that would result in dozens and eventually hundreds of murders of innocent Israelis leaves anyone with a sense of conscience aghast.

Writing for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), Dexter Van Zile remarks that

“Not only did the UCC’s 2015 General Synod fail to speak up about the corruption of the Palestinian Authority and the violence and ideology of groups like Hamas and Hezbollah in its resolutions, it did not offer up any official condemnation of ISIS and Boko Haram, two groups that have engaged in horrific crimes against humanity on two different continents – often specifically targeting Christians. The General Synod also failed to condemn the Syrian government, which has repeatedly used chemical weapons against its own citizens in that country’s civil war.

…

“The conclusion is inescapable: As a body, the UCC’s General Synod is irrationally obsessed with Israel and indifferent to Arab and Muslim misdeeds, no matter how outrageous and horrific. Misdeeds perpetrated by Arabs and Muslims simply do not offend the sensibilities of the UCC’s deliberative body with the same force as Israel’s efforts to defend itself from terrorism. This distorted focus immeasurably harms Muslim and Christian victims of Islamist aggression who warrant world attention and rescue.”

In 2014, the Presbyterian Church (USA) approved a resolution to divest from three companies that supplied Israel with equipment used in the West Bank, the resolution passed without due application to the actual legal status of the territory administered by Israel.

In May 2015, another Protestant evangelical and Pentecostal movement sponsored a Global Congress in Jerusalem. Empowered 21 is a worldwide organization based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which claims to represent 640,000 believers. This organization, which has grandiose plans to evangelize every person on earth by 2033 (an objective not only beyond its means but flatly impossible in any Muslim country) nevertheless seeks to play a role in world affairs. Its chief problem lies in its collaboration with Palestinian Christian leaders who demonize Jews, delegitimize Israel, and present a supersessionist theology. It sponsors two of the most important anti-Israel Christian groups in the region, the Bethlehem Bible College and the Christ at the Checkpoint conferences. These conferences perpetuate the doctrine that Jews are an obstacle to God’s purpose in the world. They present a version of replacement theology couched in Palestinian terms, claiming that Jesus and the first Christians (in Jerusalem) were not Jews but the ancestors of today’s Palestinians, regarded as the indigenous inhabitants of the land and the only people with a right to it.

It is important to note that the General Synod of the UCC (referred to above) invited Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb, the pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem, to deliver a sermon at a service held the night before the votes on Israel. According to a report by CAMERA:

“During his talk, Raheb wrote the Jewish people out of their scriptures and out of the Land of Israel itself, repeatedly referring to the people of ancient Israel as ‘the Palestinians’ or the ‘people of Palestine.’ He did, however, use the word Israel in reference to the ‘occupation’. Raheb’s ugly effort to write the Jews out of the Bible is contrary to the spirit and letter of a resolution passed by the UCC’s 1987 General Synod which condemned replacement theology (which it referred to as ‘supersessionism’), but that did not stop delegates from giving the pastor a standing ovation.”

It has been argued that anti-Zionism within many churches is “a symptom of the death throes of mainline Protestantism.”

“All of the denominations that have gone into the camp of advocacy for divestment, divestment and sanctions are losing members at a catastrophic pace. For example: the United Methodist Church, Episcopal Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church have all lost around 30% of their membership over the last couple of decades…. Within the whole body of Christian[s] in our part of the world [the U.S.] these Liberal-Protestant denominations are losing membership by very large factors, while those denominations that have stood apart from the WCC [World Council of Churches] have been gaining in membership, by approximately the same factors.”

This may, in part, explain why the mainline churches have moved to the radical left on several issues, including support of the Palestinians, in an effort to win back members from a population that is generally more liberal than, say, fifty years ago. But it does not explain why so many evangelical and Pentecostal denominations, as we have seen, share this anti-Zionism while being, for the most part, more conservative in their social views. Nor should it diminish our awareness of the role churches and other bodies linked to the WCC still play in promoting BDS and generally propagating a pro-Palestinian narrative that plays into calls for the abolition of Israel and the expulsion or genocide of the Jewish population there.

Under the influence of Christian Aid, a World Council of Churches affiliate with a marked socialist agenda, many churches in Britain are also engaged in boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) activities.

According to Chana Shapira, writing for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs:

Christian Aid works to influence public opinion and policy with a two-pronged approach of Israel-delegitimization and funding of far-left pro-Palestinian organizations. It also works with the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Israel and Palestine (EAPPI), a project of the World Council of Churches that recruits volunteers to participate in on-site propaganda tours, and then work as activists back home. In very loose terms, Christian Aid provides funding and EAPPI provides personnel.

Pro-Palestinian positions are advanced while there is a complete absence of any representation of moderate Israeli viewpoints. Errors of omission are frequent. ‘Israeli’ statements generally appear as anonymous, unverifiable remarks allegedly made by Israelis who defame Israel and the IDF.

Christian Aid’s biased agenda is supported by WCC member churches. Although it is not clear that these in fact represent the majority views of church members, this is the policy view adhered to by the clerical elites. The volume of material condemning Israel’s policies overwhelmingly dwarfs the few official statements supporting Israel’s right to exist.

Shapira’s lengthy and fully referenced article is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the impact of Christian Aid in the UK, where it is supported by a government agency, the Department for International Development, and a group of 41 churches. She provides a detailed breakdown of major UK churches, Anglicans, Methodists and others, and their work with Christian Aid’s agenda. Outside the UK, Christian Aid supports Marxist and socialist political NGOs such as B’Tselem and Breaking the Silence, a stance that contradicts the organization’s stated aims of relieving poverty.

Depressing as this all is, there are glimmers of hope in unexpected places. In Israel, a multi-party group within parliament formed the Knesset Christian Allies Caucus in order to strengthen cooperation between Christians in general and the state of Israel. Its mission statement reads as follows:

The mission of the Knesset Christian Allies Caucus is to build direct lines of communication cooperation and coordination between the Knesset and Christian leaders around the world. We strive to establish relationships between the members of Knesset and leaders of Churches, Christian organizations and political representatives throughout the globe.

The Knesset Christian Allies Caucus has attracted an increasingly diverse and growing number of Christian leaders globally. The Caucus works with Christians who support Israel alongside those who are undecided on their position towards Israel. Many Christians recognize that their belief in the Bible connects them to the land and the people of Israel. On this basis, we work together to achieve our goals.

Also in Israel, the Christian Empowerment Council, headed by Father Gabriel Naddaf, a controversial Greek Orthodox priest from the Aramean community, works hard to integrate Christian Arabs into Israeli society, encouraging enrolment in the Israel Defense Force through a separate organization, the Israeli Christians Recruitment Forum, for which he is the spiritual leader. Naddaf has written feelingly about the opposition to his work among many Arab Christians and Palestinians, opposition that has led to death threats, his excommunication, and constant harassment. Isolated though he may be, he has brought large numbers of young Christian Arabs to join the IDF and integrate fully into Israeli life.

In the United States Christians United for Israel, a large lobbying group, has been described by the Washington Post as “America’s largest and most dependable pro-Israel group.” Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Charles Krauthammer has said, “I do not know of an organization in the world more important to Israel than CUFI.”

According to CUFI, with a membership of two million, it has “driven hundreds of thousands of emails to government officials, held 2,162 pro-Israel events in cities and towns across the country, garnered more than 1.2 million Facebook fans, brought 304 leading pastors to Israel on 12 Pastors Leadership Tours, has trained more 2,500 students on how best to stand with Israel, presently has recognized college chapters on 140 campuses as well as an active presence at an additional 163 universities.”

CUFI has now opened a branch in the United Kingdom, where it has started to work along similar lines, but with a smaller following. It follows in the footsteps of a much older UK organization, Christian Friends of Israel (CFI), a non-denominational body with activists across the country. CFI also has branches throughout the world, and has had a centre in Jerusalem since 1985. Over the past year, Nigel Goodrich, a Christian pastor in Scotland, has successfully created some seven Friends of Israel groups in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dumfries and Galloway, and elsewhere, and has organized large conferences attended mainly by Christians but also Jews, who are acting solidly with him and his following. This author has lectured at his conferences in Edinburgh and Glasgow, and can affirm the genuine enthusiasm and love of Israel displayed by the audiences. Inspired by Goodrich’s example, Glasgow Friends of Israel now runs a weekly stall in Buchanan Street, where the vicious anti-Israel Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign have held sway for many years.

Clearly, there is a new momentum within some Christian churches that presents a serious challenge to those denominations that are anti-Zionist. Where organizations such as Christian Aid seem more motivated by political considerations and adaptations of Marxist philosophy, these new supporters of Israel appear to be inspired by a love for the Bible and the rights it offers to Israel and its people, the Jews.

It is too early to say, but a shift seems to be taking place. As Christians in the West become more and more aware of the slaughter and expulsion of Christians in the Middle East, and the ongoing war of Muslim extremists against them, many have started to realize that the enemy they now face is the same enemy the Jews have been facing for centuries, especially since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.

There may yet come a time when Christians opposed to Israel understand that its abolition would mean the end of any protection for their fellow believers across the region and a dramatic clampdown on Christian freedom across the Muslim world.

Dr. Denis MacEoin formerly lectured in the Religious Studies Department at Newcastle University.

[1] Philip Berryman, Liberation Theology: Essential Facts about the Revolutionary Movement in Latin America–and Beyond, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, (1987), p. 4.

[2] “In a 2000 Princeton University survey, nearly two-thirds of U.S. evangelicals considered themselves liberal or (especially) moderate rather than conservative. In another survey in 2009, 35 percent of evangelicals were Democrats, 34 percent Republicans, and the rest independents. Many views of evangelicals defy stereotypes; for example, in 2008, 60 percent of evangelicals felt that the government should help the poor more.” From “The Evangelical Left in History and Today” by Craig S. Keener, Huffington Post, April 19, 2012.

• Some spoke of “resistance,” but to them, resistance meant listening to music. A man on a talk show said he was offering “free hugs.”

• ---

• A French judge, Marc Trevidic, in charge of all the major Islamic terrorism cases over the last ten years, said a few days before the November attacks in Paris that the situation was “getting worse” and that “radicalized groups” could “carry out attacks resulting in hundreds of deaths.” He was quickly transferred to a court in northern France, where he has been assigned to petty crimes and divorce cases.

• All the French political leaders know that the situation is out of control, but not one will say so publicly. Not one has asked the government why it took almost three hours for the police to intervene during the attack at the Bataclan Theater, where 89 people were murdered and over 200 wounded.

• France’s political leaders are apparently hoping that people will get used to being attacked and learn to live with terrorism. In the meantime, they are trying to divert the attention of the public with — “climate change!”

Several weeks have passed since Islamist attackers bloodied Paris. France’s President François Hollande is describing the killers as just “a horde of murderers” acting in the name of a “mad cause.” He adds that “France has no enemy.” He never uses the word “terrorism.” He no longer says the word “war.”

France never was, in fact, at war. Police were deployed on the streets. Special Forces had to “intervene” a few days later in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis. That was it.

French forces did bomb positions of the Islamic State in Syria; and Hollande traveled the world to find coalition, but could not. Now he says he wants to turn a page. The French public seems to want to turn a page, too.

From the beginning, pacifism and appeasement filled the air. A German pianist came to playJohn Lennon’s Imagine in front of the Bataclan Theater; since then, other pianists have come. On the Place de la République, people assemble every evening to sing more songs by the Beatles: All You Need Is Love; Love Me Do. Candles are lit, and banners deployed, calling for “universal brotherhood.”

Those invited to speak on TV about what happened allude to “senseless acts.” They do not blame anyone.

Some spoke of “resistance,” but to them, resistance meant listening to music. To others, it meant having a drink with friends in a bar. In a widely circulated video, a man tries to reassure his child. “They have guns,” he mutters, “but we have flowers.”

Heart-shaped stickers are posted on mosques. Words such as “We love you” and “We share your pain” are written on the hearts.

Just after the attacks, French philosopher Michel Onfray said that France for many years had led Islamophobic bombings against the Muslim world, so “it was logical if the Muslims now attacked France.”

When his words were used in an Islamic State propaganda video, and reporters asked him if he regretted what he said, he replied, “No.”

A man who lost his wife in the Bataclan massacre said on a talk show that he would live in the future as he did before; that he had no hatred at all against the murderers, just compassion. Another man on a different talk show said he was offering “free hugs.”

If some French think otherwise, they are silent.

All political leaders in France speak like Hollande. They say the country must show “unity” and “solidarity.” All of them know the mood of the vast majority; even those who might want to say more, stay silent.

Almost no one mentions radical Islam. Those who do, prefer the word “jihadism,” and rush to emphasize that “jihadism” is “not related to Islam.”

Hollande, when he still spoke of war, said that France had “an enemy.” He avoided the word “Islamic,” instead referring to the Islamic State by its Arabic acronym, “Daesh.”

He knew that “Daesh” could not be defeated without an American intervention that would not take place. With symbolic gestures, he did the best he could.

He also seems to know that the main enemy of France is not in Syria or Iraq, but inside the country: France already finds herself defeated.

More than half the Islamists who attacked Paris on November 13 were Muslims born and raised in France. Mohamed Merah, the murderer of Jewish children in Toulouse in 2012, and those who attacked the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and the kosher supermarket in January all were Muslims born and raised in France.

Over 750 no-go zones — autonomous areas ruled by radical imams and Muslim gangs — exist in France.

Radical imams and Muslim gangs also control most of France’s prisons: 70% of prison inmates in France are apparently Muslim. Non-Muslim inmates are attacked and threatened; many are forced to convert to Islam.

A British survey published in 2014 showed that 16% of French approve of the Islamic State. Among people aged 18-25, the proportion rose to 27%. Within the French Muslim population, the numbers are undoubtedly higher.

More than 1000 French Muslims have left France to fight for the Islamic State. At least 400 have http://www.france24.com/fr/20150618-depart-francais-jihad-syrie-surveillance-filiere-ciotti-menucci-rapport” style=”text-decoration: none; color: rgb(218, 87, 36);”>returned without being stopped or vetted at a border. Thousands of radicalized French Muslims have never left. Many are good, loyal citizens; but many could have learned all they wanted to know on the internet and on Islamic satellite television stations. Still others — hundreds of thousands of French Muslims — are not radicalized but are ready to help the radicalized ones; ready to host them or offer them asylum.

More than 10,000 French Muslims are classified as extremely dangerous by the police and are linked to “jihadist activities”. They are registered in what the French government calls “S files,” but there is no way to monitor their whereabouts. Placing them all in detention centers would involve a complete break with what is left of the rule of law in France.

All of the French Muslims who participated in the November 13 attacks were registered in “S files,” but that did not change anything. They were free to act, and they did.

For the first time in Europe, suicide bomb attacks took place. The explosive used to makesuicide belts, triacetone triperoxide (TATP), is powerful and extremely sensitive to friction, temperature change and impact. Making belts containing TATP requires a “professional.”

A French judge, Marc Trevidic, in charge of all the main Islamic terrorism cases over the last ten years, said a few days before the November attacks that the situation was “getting worse,” was now “out of control,” and that “radicalized groups” established in the country could “carry out attacks resulting in hundreds of deaths.” He was quickly transferred to a court in Lille, northern France, where he was assigned to petty crimes and divorce cases.

All the French political leaders know that Marc Trevidic is right — that the situation is out of control — but not one will say so publicly. Not one has asked the government why it took almost three hours for the police to intervene during the attack at the Bataclan Theater, where 89 people were murdered and over 200 wounded. There are simply not enough well-trained police, and not enough weapons in the hands of the police, and not enough bulletproof vests.

For the next few months, more soldiers and police officers will be placed in front of public buildings, synagogues, churches and mosques, but “soft” targets, such as theaters, cafés and restaurants, are not protected. It is as easy to enter a theater in Paris today as it was on November 13. French police do not have the right to carry a weapon when they are on duty.

In a few weeks, French military actions against the Islamic State will doubtless stop. President Hollande, the French government, and most French political leaders probably hope that the French will soon forget the attacks. They know that the problems are now too widespread to be solved without something resembling a civil war. When more attacks occur, they will talk of “war” again. They are supposedly hoping that people will get used to being attacked and learn to live with terrorism.

In the meantime, French politicians are trying to divert the attention of the public with — “climate change!” The conference in Paris will last a fortnight. President Hollande says he wants save the planet. He will be photographed next to America’s Barack Obama and China’s Jiang Zemin.

French journalists are no longer discussing jihad; they are discussing “climate change.”

Until December 11, at least, Paris will be the safest city.

In June 2015, five months after the January attacks, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls saidthat the French had to “adapt to Islam”. In November, he added that “Islam has to stand up to jihadism”. The French Council of the Muslim Faith, offering “condolences” to the families of the victims, specified that Muslims were “victims” too, and that they should not be “stigmatized.”

Regional elections will be held on December 6th and 13th, the same time as the conference on climate change.

Polls show that the rightist party, National Front, will almost certainly win in a landslide. Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Front, did not depart from the calls for “unity” and “solidarity.” She is, however, the only politician to say unambiguously that the main enemy is not outside the country, but within. She is also the only politician to say that a return to security implies a return to border controls. A National Front victory does not, however, mean that Marine Le Pen will win the 2017 presidential election: all the other parties and the media might band together against her.

France’s National Front is part of the increasingly popular rejection of the European Union. Theinvasion of Europe by hundreds of thousands of mostly Muslim migrants has strengthened that stance. The Islamist attacks in Paris, combined with the state of emergency decreed in Belgium for several days after the attacks, have helped this rejection to gain more ground. In addition, the news that several of the Paris terrorists came to France among illegal migrants — and had successfully used false Syrian passports to enter Europe, where they could go from country to country unhindered — did not help.

The rise of populism is slowly destroying the unelected, unaccountable, and untransparent European Union. Many European mainstream journalists see this change as a “threat.”

The real threat to Europe might be elsewhere.

“The barbarians,” wrote the commentator Mark Steyn, “are inside, and there are no gates.”

After the attacks in Paris, Judge Marc Trevidic, again, raised the possibility of simultaneous attacks in several cities in France and in Europe. He said that if these attacks took place, the situation would become “really serious”. He said he had documents to show that Islamist groups were planning to organize such attacks. If the suicide bombers, he said, had been on time at the Stade de France, before the 79,000 spectators had entered, the death toll could have been worse. He concluded that too little had been done for too long, and that now it was probably too late.

During the November 27 official ceremony in Paris honoring the victims of the attacks, a song,If We Only Have Love, by Jacques Brel — selected by President Hollande – was sung: “If we only have love – We can melt all the gun then give the new world – To our daughters and sons.”

How could an Islamist not be moved by that?