Today's Church Times makes depressing reading, especially this piece by Ben White
http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/content.asp?id=68886
who has also written a book called Israeli Apartheid: a beginner's guide.
Maybe then it is not surprising that the same Ben White appears to think that it is OK to be anti-semitic. At least that is what he said in this article:
http://www.counterpunch.org/white0617.html
'I do not consider myself an anti-Semite, yet I can also understand why some are'.
How an Anglican paper, which I understand is taken seriously by all the Bishops in the land as well as the two Archbishops, representing a church whose Supreme Governor is the Queen, can commission a piece of work by someone who is on record as understanding anti-semitism is a mystery which it is very difficult to fathom.
In Nazi Germany maybe, but in good old England ....?
But life must go on. So it was lovely to go out and buy three bunches of flowers for Shabbat at one of the tiny businesses run by the Orthodox Jewish community of North Manchester. You arrive in their house, are seated like royalty and offered a fabulous selection at very reasonable prices. I bought two bunches of tulips for friends and one bunch of roses for my own home.
I don't think that the one cancels out the other. Being hospitable, kind to others and welcoming of strangers is what Judaism is all about. So when we are told that the future of the Jews of Europe and especially of England is doomed, I cannot believe that such pockets of goodness might disappear forever.
Not if the Almighty has anything to do with it, I hope.
And for the record: it is not a two-state solution that Hamas wants, but a Judenrein and Christianrein ummah in which Israel disappears, and there are no more Jews or Christians left. Which is why during the recent cease-fire with Israel, it actually increased its barrage of rockets against Israel. Because peace is the last thing on its mind:
Ironically, Ben White's piece is accompanied by a picture that seems to show a Hamas weapons dump exploding after being targetted by Israeli forces. Funny how some people find the existential threat to Israel so easy to overlook.
I suppose you can't expect the author of a book called 'Israeli Apartheid: A beginner’s guide' to be the slightest bit interested in seeing the conflict from any other side.
Particularly noteworthy is White's whitewashing (not much pun intended!) of the persecution of Palestinian Christians. I've talked to Christian businessmen in the West Bank who are forced to pay extortion money to gangs in order to prevent their businesses being taken over. Attacks on Christians and their property are not 'isolated' as White claims. Even the BBC acknowledged the persecution of Palestinian Christians; referring to the US State Department's annual report of human rights abuses of 2005, acknowledged this persecution, they upheld my complaint against one of their programmes which carried a report making precisely the claim that Ben White does.
In fact the largest decline in the Christian population of the West Bank occurred between 1948 and 1967. After that it stabilised until, you guessed it, 1993 when it began to decline again. Since the second intifada, of course, there's been a haemorrhage of Christians.
Of course Israel is not perfect - neither her citizens nor her government nor its policies. But one wonders at the blindness afflicting people who can see any state in the world so totally in terms of disdainful blame as White's writing seems to betray.
Posted by: Huldah | January 17, 2009 at 03:25 PM