From Melanie Phillips’s Diary:

The Archbishop of Canterbury and all those other Christians who blame Israel for the plight of Bethlehem’s Christians should be sent a copy of this article by the incomparable Khaled abu Toameh (a Palestinian Muslim) in the Jerusalem Post:

According to the families, many Christians have long been afraid to complain in public about the campaign of ‘intimidation’ for fear of retaliation by their Muslim neighbors and being branded ‘collaborators’ with Israel. But following an increase in attacks on Christian-owned property in the city over the past few months, some Christians are no longer afraid to talk about the ultra-sensitive issue. And they are talking openly about leaving the city…

Qumsiyeh said he has documented more than 160 incidents of attacks on Christians in the area in recent years. He said a monk was recently roughed up for trying to prevent a group of Muslim men from seizing lands owned by Christians in Beit Sahur. Thieves have targeted the homes of many Christian families and a ‘land mafia’ has succeeded in laying its hands on vast areas of land belonging to Christians, he added. Fuad and Georgette Lama woke up one morning last September to discover that Muslims from a nearby village had fenced off their family’s six-dunam plot in the Karkafa suburb south of Bethlehem. ‘A lawyer and an official with the Palestinian Authority just came and took our land,’ said 69-year-old Georgette Lama.

The couple was later approached by senior PA security officers who offered to help them kick out the intruders from the land. ‘We paid them $1,000 so they could help us regain our land,’ she said, almost in tears. ‘Instead of giving us back our land, they simply decided to keep it for themselves. They even destroyed all the olive trees and divided the land into small plots, apparently so that they could offer each for sale.’ When her 72-year-old husband, Fuad, went to the land to ask the intruders to leave, he was severely beaten and threatened with guns. ‘My husband is after heart surgery and they still beat him,’ Georgette Lama said. ‘These people have no heart. We’re afraid to go to our land because they will shoot at us. Ever since the beating, my husband is in a state of trauma and has difficulties talking.’

‘We will fight and fight until we recover our land,’ Fuad Lama said. ‘We will resort to the courts and to the public opinion for help. Unfortunately, Christian leaders and spokesmen are afraid to talk about the problems we are facing. We know of three other Christian families - Salameh, Kawwas and Asfour - whose lands were also illegally seized by Muslims.’ A Christian businessman who asked not to be identified said the conditions of Christians in Bethlehem and its surroundings had deteriorated ever since the area was handed over to the PA in 1995. ‘Every day we hear of another Christian family that has immigrated to the US, Canada or Latin America,’ he said. ‘The Christians today make up less than 15 percent of the population. People are running away because the Palestinian government isn’t doing anything to protect them and their property against Muslim thugs. Of course not all the Muslims are responsible, but there is a general feeling that Christians have become easy prey.’

So the land grab of Palestinian property and the destruction of Palestinian olive trees and the persecution of Palestinian Christians are being perpetrated by – Palestinian Muslims; and not just that, but by the Palestinian Authority, the one that has received a ton of money from the EU and probably a fair few Christians too, because they know for a certainty that the persecution of the Palestinian Christians is perpetrated by Israel.

What scapegoating. What ignorance. What wickedness.

This video clip is taken from Glenn Beck’s program Exposed: The Extremist Agenda. It features a section on the threat from Iran and an interview with Benjamin Netanyahu (former Israeli prime minister and chairman of the Likud party). For those who are interested, the full program is available here.

Just months later, university ejects evangelical Christians from campus

by Bob Unruh, WorldNetDaily.com

The Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University has been renamed after Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal donated $20 million to its projects. And while that may be just the tail, the dog appears to be moving away from its historic Catholic and Jesuit teaching philosophy too.

The Center’s leaders say it now will be used to put on workshops regarding Islam, fostering exchanges with the Muslim world, addressing U.S. policy towards the Muslim world, working on the relationship of Islam and Arab culture, addressing Muslim citizenship and civil liberties, and developing exchange programs for students from the Muslim world.

The “Christian” part of the center’s projects at the university that has a history of 200 years of higher education following its Christian founding, is conspicuous by its absence in its website plans for its 10-year future.

But that won’t be a surprise to leaders of a number of Christian evangelical groups whose leaders recently were told to leave the campus and not list Georgetown University as a site for operations in the future.

Read the report in full »

From The Times (London):

Carey backs Pope and issues warning on ‘violent’ Islam
by Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent, and Richard Owen, in Rome

THE former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey of Clifton has issued his own challenge to “violent” Islam in a lecture in which he defends the Pope’s “extraordinarily effective and lucid” speech.

Lord Carey said that Muslims must address “with great urgency” their religion’s association with violence. He made it clear that he believed the “clash of civilisations” endangering the world was not between Islamist extremists and the West, but with Islam as a whole.

“We are living in dangerous and potentially cataclysmic times,” he said. “There will be no significant material and economic progress [in Muslim communities] until the Muslim mind is allowed to challenge the status quo of Muslim conventions and even their most cherished shibboleths.”

Read the full article »

As is now well known, Pope Benedict last week gave an academic lecture which has apparently caused offense to Muslims. You can read the lecture to see just how innocuous the remarks were here. His remarks seem to have been quite deliberately ripped out of context.

But the madness continues with violence, church burnings and street demonstrations. In this video clip, Infolive.tv gives an overview of the controversy.

by William Kristol, The Weekly Standard

“How odd / Of God / To choose / The Jews.” Thus the British journalist (and communist) William Norman Ewer, in the early part of the last century. The reply came from Cecil Browne: “But not so odd / As those who choose / A Jewish God / But spurn the Jews.”

Browne’s riposte may have won the poetic exchange. But Ewer’s anti-Judaism prevailed in the next decades in Europe. Buried there after World War II, hatred of the Jews flourished for the rest of the 20th century in the Middle East. Is anti-Judaism now enjoying a broader revival? It would seem so.

University of Chicago political science professor John Mearsheimer came to Washington late last month along with his sidekick, Stephen Walt of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Speaking to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, they attacked the “Israel lobby” (of which they claim I am a part) for its pernicious deeds, and singled out several Jews who served or serve in the Bush administration. These Jews, they explained, have special “attachments” in the Middle East. Their attachment? Their religious belief–Judaism. Bigotry now has an academic cachet.

Read the full article »

ANGLICANS FOR ISRAEL today welcomed the joint agreement between the Anglican Church and the Chief Rabbis of Israel as a great step forward to a new and happy concord between the Anglican Church and the Jewish people. AFI director Simon McIlwaine said:

“This is an historic agreement on a par with Nostra Aetate. The Communique is a clear rebuke and a resounding reproach to those elements within the Anglican Communion who have been working obsessively to isolate Israel and delegitimise the Jewish State and People. We welcome the Church’s support for “all forms of constructive engagement, whether religious, humanitarian or economic, which seek to enable closer bonds between individuals and communities.” The Church has made it clear by these words that it will countenance no further attempts to boycott Israel, and that the Synod vote in February was a tragic aberration and is not in accordance with Anglican doctrine.

The enemies of Israel in our Church, though small in numbers, are likely to react angrily to this statement and will seek to undermine the Archbishop’s renewed commitment to loving interfaith relations with our Jewish brothers and sisters. In the months ahead, therefore, we,as faithful Anglicans, must ensure that these wonderful words are matched by our deeds and that-with God’s help- renewed campaigns to divest from Israel or companies doiing business in or with Israel are defeated.”

Archbishop of Canterbury and Chief Rabbis sign historic agreement

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams and the Chief Rabbis of Israel, Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar and Chief Rabbi Yonah Metzger today signed a joint Declaration which sets out a framework for continuing dialogue between them. Dr Williams described the agreement as historic:

“This is a most significant step in developing better mutual understanding and trust between the Anglican Communion and the Chief Rabbinate and worldwide Judaism.”

The Archbishop was supported in the meeting by the Coadjutor Bishop in Jerusalem, The Rt Revd Suheil Dawani and by Bishops Michael Jackson and John Stroyan. The Chief Rabbis were supported by Rabbi David Rosen and by the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations, Sir Jonathan Sacks. The Archbishop paid tribute to Sir Jonathan and to Bishop Suheil for their constructive roles in the discussions leading to this meeting.

The agreement adds to the growing network of bilateral and multilateral dialogues between religious leaders in the Middle East and in the wider world. This network of dialogue is a major contribution to a world in which religious faith is an increasingly important dimension of people’s lives and of national policies.

At a reception to witness the signing of the joint declaration, attended by 70 leaders of the Jewish and Christian communities of England, the guests heard a presentation by the Chief Executive of the Council of Christians and Jews and by the Director of the Centre for the Study of Jewish Christian Relations. The presentations illustrated the range of new initiatives taken by these two complementary organisations to take forward relationships between Christian and Jewish communities in England.

Dr Williams said that the agreement would help to advance inter faith relations:

“This is a potentially fruitful development for relations between Christians and Jews in general and for the peoples of the Holy Land in particular. What we’ve agreed today will provide a framework within which both practical and sometimes challenging issues can be discussed on the basis of mutual trust and respect”.

The Archbishop and the Chief Rabbis also agreed on the need for a renewed sense of urgency in the search for long term peace, justice and security in the Middle East in general and in Israel and the Palestinian territories in particular. The Archbishop and Chief Rabbis called for the greatest possible response to the need now for reconstruction and rebuilding both of the physical infrastructure and of the emotional and psychological relations of Christian, Jewish and Muslim believers in the region. Dr Williams said that the dialogue would make trust and cooperation easier to establish:

“We have acknowledged the tensions that shadow the present situation particularly the ongoing tragic conflicts in the Holy Land. But our hope has rested very firmly on this; that without friendship and mutual confidence, without the ability to speak to one another candidly and lovingly, we shall never be in a position where our relationship can change things and challenge things and move the situation forward.”

The Chief Rabbis emphasised the responsibility of religious leaders to do their utmost to ensure that religion is not abused for violent ends.

The text of agreement

Joint declaration by The Archbishop of Canterbury The Most Revd Dr Rowan Williams and The Chief Rabbis of Israel, Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar and Chief Rabbi Yonah Metzger

1. The Most Revd Dr Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar and Chief Rabbi Yonah Metzger of Israel, met in friendship at Lambeth Palace on 5th September 2006/12th of Elul 5766, to commit themselves to a continuing relationship based on mutual trust and respect. They gave thanks to the Creator and Lord of the universe for their meeting. At the end of their meeting they made the following statement:

2. “We meet today as religious leaders, Anglican Christians and Israeli Jews, each part of the wider world community of Christianity and Judaism. We seek a dialogue which draws both on our particularity and also on the universal nature of our respective communities and which makes its contribution to the wider dialogue of the religions of the world in which we share.

3. Our meeting forms a further and hopeful chapter in the long story of the relationship between Christianity and Judaism. It is a story in which Christianity emerges from within Judaism, but includes down the centuries all too many times of violence and persecution by Christians of Jews. It also includes significant signs of redemption and hope for a fruitful future together, not least in the United Kingdom where the resettlement of the Jewish communities after three and a half centuries of exile is being celebrated this year. The United Kingdom, encouraged by its Christian community, was involved in the origins of the State of Israel and the Church of England was instrumental in initiating the first Council of Christians and Jews in the dark days of 1942. Since those terrible times of the Holocaust a relationship between our communities, nationally and internationally, has grown from the steady work of encounter, discussion, reflection and reconciliation.

4. This relationship has not been without setbacks and difficulties, but for the Church of England and the Anglican Communion this is a commitment that reflects a continued determination to honour the covenant made by God with Abraham. The outworking of this determination is found in many places: in our welcome for the foundational document ‘Nostra Aetate’ [1] of our sister Roman Catholic Church in 1965 which has happily led to her present relationship of dialogue with representatives of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel; in the recommendations of the Lambeth Conferences of 1988 and 1998 and the document ‘Sharing One Hope’ [2 & 3]; in the joint declaration by the Presidents of the Council of Christians and Jews on anti-Semitism in 2001 [4]; in the work of the office of the Archbishop of Canterbury towards the Alexandria declaration in 2002 [5]; in our strong support for the inauguration of a national Holocaust Memorial Day in the United Kingdom; and in the statements made by the Archbishop on those occasions [6]. Our prayer is that the Almighty will redeem our past and direct our future.

5. The dialogue between religions is an essential need of our time and requires that all people of faith bend their best efforts to this common task. In this connection we are sensitive in particular to the importance of continuing to develop our relationships of trust with Islam, nationally in our two countries and internationally. For Christians and Jews, however, the task of building mutual relationship has a different and prior basis than our dialogue with any other religion. Our relationship is unique, not only historically and culturally, but also scripturally, and for both religions, is rooted in the one overarching covenant of God with Abraham to which God remains faithful through all time. It is unique historically through the interaction of the Christian and Jewish communities, especially in Europe down to the Holocaust; and it is unique in the contributions made through the arts, science and humanities to a common culture.

6. Our meeting today builds also on the personal relationships which have grown between us from our previous occasions of personal meeting in Europe and in Israel and from our correspondence. We expect and intend that the friendship and respect that we hold for each other will continue to grow and provide an example to our communities.

7. We consider that the purpose of this and future meetings is to provide new opportunities for dialogue between us. Dialogue has profound value in its own right and its purposes are mutual understanding and respect of each others’ traditions and beliefs; the sharing of common concerns; the development of personal human relationships, and in all these things an openness to God’s initiative. Neither evangelism nor conversion has a place amongst the purposes of the dialogue and we emphasise the importance of respect for each other’s faith and of rejecting actions intended to undermine the integrity of the other.

8. We recognise that we meet in the context of troubled times in many parts of a world where religious faith has an increasingly significant place in shaping the thoughts and actions of people and communities. We note both signs of hope and of concern and we seek to play our part in enabling mutual understanding between religions for the good of the world.

9. Amongst our profound concerns is the rise of anti-semitism in Britain and the rest of Europe, in the Middle East and across the world at the present time. This is a scourge that we are committed to struggle against. Where it is fostered within communities of faith we have particular responsibilities which we will not shirk; where it is fostered by governments or political parties we will openly oppose it; at all times we will seek to educate the coming generations in the history of anti-semitism, recognising that there have been times when the Church has been complicit in it.

10. The Holy Land has a very special place in our heritage, as it also has for Muslims. We long for the time of peace and justice spoken of by Isaiah: “I will make a new heavens and a new earth. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain”, but we are also conscious that we are far from such a time. The Holy Land and its people, Jewish, Christian and Muslim, continue to suffer all forms of violence and its consequences. Terrorism remains rife. Governments and political and religious movements deny the very right to existence of the State of Israel. There is no agreement on the rights of the Palestinian people and the means to mutual wellbeing and flourishing.

11. In these circumstances we commit ourselves afresh to the task of peace making in the Holy Land and we believe that our meeting today is both a sign and a potentially fruitful action to that end.

12. We reaffirm for ourselves today the condemnations of violence made by our colleagues and predecessors such as in the 2002 Alexandria Declaration. We reaffirm our belief in the rights of the state of Israel to live within recognised and secure borders and to defend itself by all legal means against those who threaten its peace and security. We condemn without reserve those who deny a place for Israel and especially those who engage in the evil work of seeking to bring about its destruction. We warmly encourage all forms of constructive engagement, whether religious, humanitarian or economic, which seek to enable closer bonds between individuals and communities.

13. In our meeting today, we have listened carefully to each other and have taken note of those aspects of our common experience and current situations which can form the basis for further discussion and reflection. In this connection we note in particular our respective relationships with national governance and the potential for good and for ill that this offers; our common hopes for the good of our societies; our concern to find ways in which our younger generations will understand and appreciate their faith; and in these times when worldwide the bonds of family and community are weakened, we hope to share the possibilities open to us to seek together ways to their strengthening.

14. In all these matters we have at heart the imperative to seek ways to show the love of God to our fellow human beings and our communities with whom we share our times and places. Our hope is that by this dialogue we may allay some of the misunderstandings and anxieties in our countries by showing a mutual concern for peace, security and mutual respect.

15. Conscious of the above, we express our mutual desire to begin a time of dialogue and conversation in the coming years. We affirm that this will be a dialogue of mutual respect in which we seek only to understand each other better and to strengthen our own communities and their affection and respect for each other. To this end we commit ourselves to further meetings in Jerusalem and at Lambeth and to invite others in our wider communities to join with us. We charge our colleagues together to put in hand the necessary arrangements which will make for further fruitful meetings.

[1] 1965 “Declaration on the relation of the Church to non-Christian Religions“.

[2] 1988 and 1998 Lambeth Conferences. “Jews, Christians and Muslims: The Way of Dialogue”. Extract from the Report of the Dogmatic and Pastoral Section Lambeth Conference 1988

[3] 2001 Sharing one Hope? The Church of England and Christian-Jewish Relations. Church House Publishing

[4] Joint declaration by the Presidents of the Council of Christians and Jews on anti-Semitism in 2004.

[5] Alexandria declaration in 2002.

[6] 2006 Holocaust Memorial Day statement by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Available at http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/

[Signed]

Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar of Israel

Chief Rabbi Yonah Metzger of Israel

The Most Revd Dr Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury

Dated: 5th September 2006
12th of Elul, 5766

A letter to the editor of the San Francisco Chronicle from David Meir-Levi:

Jaxon Van Derbeken’s “Everyone needs to be killed” (SF Chron, 9.1.06, B-1), tells us how, on Tuesday evening (8/29/06), a 29-year-old Afghani, Omeed Aziz Popal, went on a rampage in his father’s SUV in San Francisco, killing one man and sending 14 other victims to the hospital, seven in critical condition.

But the article fails to connect some very important dots. Bloggers and on-line news sites report that Popal is a Moslem and called himself a terrorist. And this information connects Popal with a series of similar terror attacks.

Last month in Seattle, Naveed Afzal Haq, a Pakistani Moslem, shot six Jews, killing one, at a Jewish Community Federation office. He was specific as to his intentions and motivation: kill Jews as revenge against Israel.

On 3 March, 2006, at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, a 22-year-old Iranian Moslem, Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, went on a killing spree in a rented SUV to “punish the government of the United States” and “avenge the deaths of Muslims around the world.” When making his initial statement in court, Taheri-azar expressed gratitude “for the opportunity to spread the will of Allah.” He also stated that he purposely rented an SUV in order to inflict more damage with the large vehicle.

Other cases in recent years include Hasan Akbar, an American Moslem sergeant in the 101st Airborne Division, who attacked his fellow soldiers at an American command center in Kuwait with grenades and rifle fire, killing one and wounding 15. His explanation: his American soldier comrades were killing “his people” in the Middle East.

In 2002, an Egyptian Moslem, Hesham Ali Hadayet, killed two people when he shot up the El Al ticket counter at the Los Angeles airport. His motive: he was contemplating suicide and wanted to guarantee his place in paradise with his virgins, alongside of Allah, by taking Jews with him.
And Ali Hasan Abu Kamal, a Moslem, was carrying a note denouncing “Zionists”
and others who “must be annihilated & exterminated” when he opened fire on tourists from the observation deck of the Empire State Building.

In February of last year, Moslem Americans in New Jersey posted on their websites such comments as: “Oh Allah, grant me the privilege of slitting his throat” with reference to Armenian and Coptic Christian Americans who had the temerity to engage in debate about Islam on the web. When a local Christian Coptic family was found ritually slaughtered (all tied to chairs, gagged, and their throats slit), with a note condemning them for their anti-Islamic comments, the FBI and local police refused to consider it a hate-crime. Later, in the same area, an Armenian Christian family was found murdered in the same gruesome manner.

And lets not forget the murderous rampage of Lee Boyd Malvo and John Allen Muhammad, two Moslems who perpetrated 13 shooting attacks, of which ten were fatal, randomly killing innocent pedestrians in the D.C. area. Muhammad declared that he ‘hated this country” and planned to carry out many more killings in order to terrorize the nation and undercut its economy.

Over the past few years, dozens of murders and attempted murders have been perpetrated by Moslems who espouse hate-America slogans and declare openly that their dirty deeds are done to advance the international Islamic Jihad against the West. Yet our law enforcement organizations refuse to designate these as hate crimes or terror attacks, and most of our mainstream media refuse to inform the public of the one common factor that links them: the perpetrators are Moslem men who declare openly their hatred for America; and who describe their motive as the desire to kill American infidels in the name of Allah.

Perhaps most troubling, our mainstream Moslem community, most of whom surely are upstanding honest citizens who want nothing more than to live a good life, raise a family, and leave the world a bit better off than when they entered it*.these good American Moslems are silent in the face of the evil perpetrated by their co-religionists. Silence in the face of evil is complicity.

Everyone in America is facing the threat of murderous Moslem terrorists living in our very midst. But no one seems to be willing to analyze this threat. No one wants to connect the dots.

David Meir-Levi

This is a very graphic demonstration of the wartime connection between the Palestinian Mufti Haj Amin El Husseini and the Nazis. Note: This video at YouTube is in German but there are English subtitles after the introduction.