Praise the Lords

No, I’m not blaspheming. The House of Lords does deserve praise for at about 7 o’clock this evening, the Government lost its attempt to change the Equality Bill to prevent churches and faith-based groups to employ only those whose lives conformed to the ethics of their organisations.

Had the government succeeded, churches could have been obliged by law to employ people whose lifestyles were anti-Christian but peers voted 216 to 178 in favour of Lady O’Cathain’s (see picture) amendment to keep the current law unchanged.

In an extraordinary move, the Government then broke with House of Lords convention in a bid to damage Lady O’Cathain’s victory but in two further votes Lady O’Cathain won by 195 votes to 174 and by 177 votes to 172.

In the debate before the votes, the Government had claimed its plans would simply ‘clarify’ the law but churches could see the plans would narrow important safeguards designed to help religious employers defend their ethos.

The Government’s defeat means there will be no change to the current law, which permits churches and other faith-based employers to protect their ethos by insisting staff live consistently with the religion’s doctrine on sexual behaviour.

At this stage it is not known whether the Government will try to overturn the defeat in the Commons but we should praise the Lord for this victory.

If you signed the online petition against the government’s proposed changes (see The Chimes of Freedom, 7 January), thank you. Had the government succeeded in its aim, Christian Witness to Israel might one day have been a victim of the bill.

Tragically, very few Christians did anything to protest the government’s plan. Is that because they simply assumed the bill would fail? Or was it because they just didn’t care?

There was a time when Christians in this country were prepared to be imprisoned or to die for their convictions. Today, it seems conviction is in short supply.

Keith Green’s lyrics to the song Asleep in the Light seem more relevant than ever:

The world is sleeping in the dark,
But the church can't fight, cause it's asleep in the light.
How can you be so dead, when you've been so well fed?
Jesus rose from the grave, and you can't even get out of bed!

Read the full story at the Christian Institute website.

Smoke and Mirrors

Did you see Panorama last Monday evening? As I watched Sarah Corbin’s documentary, I was disturbed and shocked as I saw what appeared to be Israeli brutality and inhumanity towards Arab residents in East Jerusalem. But I have learned over the years that more often than not, there is another side to the story and, sure enough, Honest Reporting issued a damning rebuttal of Corbin’s report.

The BBC's flagship documentary, says Honest Reporting, distorts Jewish history and Jewish rights to Jerusalem while promoting a one-sided and biased agenda.

Any pretence at balance was thrown out of the window as reporter Jane Corbin made it clear that, under the BBC's own interpretation of international law, anything Israel does in East Jerusalem is illegal. Israelis were presented as usurpers of Palestinian rights and property in eastern Jerusalem in a one-sided piece of agitprop.

Analyst Robin Shepherd commented:

Rarely will you get a clearer insight into the flagrant institutional bias inside the world's most powerful media outlet than this. The slipperiness of the tactics employed, the unabashed censorship of vital historical context, and the blatant pursuit of a political agenda constituted a lesson in the techniques of modern day propaganda. It was something to behold.

Honest Reporting examines some of the assumptions, claims and biases that underpinned Monday’s Panorama.

Denying Jewish Rights to Jerusalem

The BBC's institutional anti-Israel bias often manifests itself not in what is broadcast but what is left out. It reports events as though Jewish history in Jerusalem began in 1948, omitting to mention that the only time East Jerusalem was exclusively Arab was between 1949 and 1967, and that was because Jordan occupied the area and forcibly expelled all the Jews.

Before 1865, the entire population of Jerusalem lived in what is now East Jerusalem Later, the city began to expand beyond the walls because of population growth and both Jews and Arabs began to build in new areas of the city.

By the time of partition, a thriving Jewish community lived in the eastern part of Jerusalem, an area that included the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. This area of the Jerusalem contains many sites of importance to the Jewish religion, including the City of David, the Temple Mount and the Western Wall. In addition, major institutions such as the Hebrew University and the original Hadassah Hospital are on Mount Scopus in East Jerusalem.

Palestinian House Demolitions

The programme gave the distinct impression that house demolitions by Israel are almost a daily occurrence. Jane Corbin disingenuously pulled a supposed list of dozens more demolitions scheduled to take place and we were treated to emotive scenes and Palestinian claims that such demolitions are driven by "racism" and "ethnic cleansing".

We were not told that illegal constructions by Jews typically take the form of additions to existing legal structures, such as closing a balcony or hollowing out an extra room under an existing building. In the Arab sector, however, illegal constructions often takes the form of multi-floor buildings with 4 to 25 living units, built with the financial assistance of the Palestinian Authority on land that is not owned by the builder.

The Hanoun Family Eviction

It was distressing to see the Hanoun family camped in the street outside their previous home. Their eviction has become something of a cause celebre and Jane Corbin did her best to portray the Hanouns as victims of Israeli malice.
The Hanoun family case, it turns out, is not quite as simple as the BBC would have us believe. After 1948, the neighbourhoods of Sheikh Jarrah and Shimon HaTzadik came under Jordanian control and in the mid-1950s Jordan settled Arabs there who took over the homes of the Jews and paid rent to the Jordanian Custodian.

After the 1967 Six Day War, after Israel gained control of East Jerusalem in a defensive war, the Jewish-owned property that had been seized by Arabs was liberated and transferred back to Israel. In 1998, Jews entered deserted houses while at the same time, a slow process of evicting Arab families who apparently refused to pay rent to the two Jewish organizations began. The Hanouns were evicted because they had refused to pay rent for years.

Shooting in Silwan

Panorama made much of the fact that some Jews living in eastern Jerusalem are armed. As if to illustrate the apparent threat this poses to the Arab residents of the area, she interviewed the victim of a shooting incident that took place in September 2009. We were treated to scenes of crying children and a story of suffering. There was no interview with any Israeli spokespeople regarding the incident. While it is not in dispute that the Palestinian was shot, the BBC relied solely on his testimony without any Israeli response.

Israel’s Police Foreign Press Spokesperson Micky Rosenfeld says that following the incident, the Israeli police immediately detained a Jewish suspect for questioning who told them he had been surrounded by six Arabs inside the neighbourhood and was attacked by them. After being surrounded, he used his weapon in an act of self defence. This was an isolated incident that could have taken place in any of the neighbourhoods in Jerusalem.

In fact, Jewish residents of Jerusalem have far more to fear from their Arab neighbours. While the incident described above is remarkably rare, not so rare were the suicide bombings, stabbings and even bulldozer attacks that have been carried out by Palestinian terrorists residing in eastern Jerusalem. The armed guards and security in the area is necessary to protect not only Jews but also Jewish holy sites from potential Arab extremists.

Read the full HR report here.

Arab aid to Haiti. Can you see it?

The following perceptive comment by Kevin Myers appeared yesterday in the Irish Independent.

One of the first aid-planes to arrive in Haiti was Israeli. If the people of Haiti were gazing up, looking for aid from Saudi Arabia or Kuwait, or anywhere in the Arab world, they're still looking up, still gazing. This is the same Arab world that has refused to integrate the Palestinians exiled from their homeland in 1948, so obviously it has no difficulty looking away when people in another hemisphere need help.

Meanwhile, the Israelis will naturally get no kudos for their goodness. They are perhaps the only people in the world for whom extenuating circumstances are routinely cited in explanation of their charitable deeds. Extenuating circumstances usually occur in mitigation for criminal acts: but for the Jews of Israel they are used instead to explain away corporal works of mercy. That is the underlying and unspoken anti-Semitism of the anti-Israeli lobby: it cannot accept that Jews, as a group, have unselfish, charitable motives.

It is five years since the Asian tsunami killed hundreds of thousands of people. The aid-planes to Indonesia arrived in remarkably similar order to those in Haiti, with Israeli and American being amongst the first. Saudi aid arrived weeks later, and went only to Muslim communities. No doubt this is why the Irish government is allowing a Saudi school to be established in Ireland, in order to promulgate Saudi values (you know, just as Irish schools are flourishing everywhere in Saudi Arabia).

And at this point in our history, it is simply impossible to parody or lampoon the abjectness that allows a special place in our educational system for the culture which gave the world Wahhabism, the 9/11 bombers, stoning to death for adulteresses, and judicially-authorised beheadings and amputations. But instead of erecting barriers to the intellectual barbarism of Wahhabism, we are actually inviting it in to spread its toxins amongst our rapidly growing Muslim communities. How they'll laugh when they talk about it all in Dublinistan in 2111.

Read the entire article.

Liars, damned liars and Israel bashers

Let me stress here that I do not regard Andrew Sibley as an 'Israel-basher'. I just think he has been misled by the Israel bashers. This piece is intended to disabuse people like Andrew Sibley of the notion that Israel is an apartheid state. In fairness, it should be said that Andrew states in his response to my review of Zion’s New Name (see Christian Zionism’s New Name)that the term is 'unhelpful'.

In my review I stated that Andrew ‘categorises Israel as … an apartheid state'. In response (see his Comment), he says, ‘Apartheid? I have said that use of such language is unhelpful do [sic] your claim is factually wrong here.’

What Andrew actually says on page 11 of the book is:

Even someone of the stature of Jimmy Carter has suggested that the Zionist policies of the State of Israel are in effect a form of apartheid because they seek exclude Palestinians from the land.

His footote reads: ‘Carter, J, [sic] Palestine: Peace not Apartheid. New York, Simon and Schuster, 2006, reported in Sizer, S., Zion’s Christian Soldiers? IVP, 2007, p,15 [sic (page 16)]. Perhaps Andrew can help me here but I find no statement to the effect that the apartheid analogy is ‘unhelpful’. Why does Andrew list Jimmy Carter’s Palestine: Peace not Apartheid in his Selected Bibliography, yet not quote directly from it in on page 11? Even then, he fails to cite the correct page of Sizer's book. This suggests to me that Andrew had not read Carter’s book, even though he included it in his bibliography. It indicates sloppy research.

So, until Andrew points me to the page where he says the apartheid analogy is ‘unhelpful’, let’s look at the charge. It is an accusation raised with monotonous regularity against Israel. Uri Davis, Jimmy Carter. and Ben White have all written about it and in an Open Letter to Bono, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) accuses Israel of practicing the ‘most pernicious form of colonialism and apartheid.'

Apartheid in South Africa was an official policy of discrimination against blacks enforced through police violence, based on minority control over a majority population who were not permitted to vote. Because Israel is a majority-rule democracy with equal rights for all citizens including Arabs who may and do vote freely, its critics have to radically redefine the term ‘apartheid’ in order to make it stick. Even Uri Davis recognises this:

A classic apartheid construction when it refers to the essential attributes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is essentially a conflict between a settler-colonial state and an indigenous population dispossessed by the colonial project.

But the situation in Israel is significantly different when compared to South Africa in one or more important senses. First, visitors to South Africa would have been hit in the face by apartheid immediately: benches for whites, benches for non-whites; toilets for whites, toilets for non-whites; parks for whites, parks for non-whites; transport for whites and transport for non-whites.

However, the first impression of Israel to a lay-visitor would possibly be the impression of a standard liberal Western democracy: there are no buses for Jews, buses for non-Jews; parks for Jews and parks for non-Jews; beaches for Jews and beaches for non-Jews. The core apartheid is veiled, and the Jewish National Fund plays an important part in the construction of this veil. (My emphasis)
Consider the following contrasts between Apartheid South Africa and Israel.

Under the Apartheid regime in South Africa, whites were the minority; blacks were the majority. In Israel, Jews are the majority, Arabs the minority.

In Apartheid South Africa, there were laws that discriminated against black citizens; in Israel there are no laws that discriminate against Arab citizens or separate them from Jews.

South Africa had a job reservation policy for white people but Israel has adopted pro-Arab affirmative action measures in some sectors. Israeli schools, universities and hospitals make no distinction between Jews and Arabs.

Black South Africans could not vote until 1994; in Israel Arab citizens of Israel can vote, and also serve in the Knesset.

An Arab citizen who brings a case before an Israeli court will have that case decided on the basis of merit, not ethnicity. This was never the case for blacks under apartheid.

In response to increasing inequality between the Jewish and Arab populations, the Israeli government established a committee to consider, among other issues, policies of affirmative action for housing Arab citizens.

Jerusalem provides free professional advice to assist Arab residents with the house permit process and structural regulations, advice which is not available to Jewish residents on the same terms.

Consider the following quotes from people who actually know something about apartheid.

Former South African President F W deKlerk, who played a key role with Nelson Mandela in ending apartheid, describe the comparisons between Apartheid South Afridca and Israel as are ‘odious’, ‘dangerous’ and ‘not a direct parallel’.
In 2003, South Africa's minister for home affairs Chief Mangosuthu Butjelezi said, 'The Israeli regime is not apartheid. It is a unique case of democracy'.

Fred Taub, the President of Boycott Watch says, ‘[t]he assertion ... that Israel is practicing apartheid is not only false, but may be considered libelous.’
Malcolm Hedding, a South African minister who worked against South African apartheid, says:

Calling Israel an 'apartheid state' is absolute nonsense. You might have structures that look like apartheid, but they're not. The barrier fence has nothing to do with apartheid and everything to do with Israel's self-defense. There was no such barrier until the second intifada, when people were being murdered on the highways. And the country does not dehumanize its minority in the sense of apartheid. The issues are totally different.

Benny Morris, who is often critical of Israel writes:

"Israel is not an apartheid state — rather the opposite, it is easily the most democratic and politically egalitarian state in the Middle East, in which Arabs Israelis enjoy far more freedom, better social services, etc. than in all the Arab states surrounding it. Indeed, Arab representatives in the Knesset, who continuously call for dismantling the Jewish state, support the Hezbollah, etc., enjoy more freedom than many Western democracies give their internal Oppositions. (The U.S. would prosecute and jail Congressmen calling for the overthrow of the U.S. Govt. or the demise of the U.S.) The best comparison would be the treatment of Japanese Americans by the US Govt ... and the British Govt. [incarceration] of German émigrés in Britain WWII ... Israel's Arabs by and large identify with Israel's enemies, the Palestinians. But Israel hasn't jailed or curtailed their freedoms en masse (since 1966 [when Israel lifted its state of martial law]).

I am indebted to the following sites for the information in this blog: Wikipedia, Camera and Zionism on the Web.

Is Israel expansionist?

Andrew Sibley has graciously responded to my review of his book Zion's New Name (see Comment on 'Replacement Theology's New Name') and raises a number of issues that deserve a response. Over the next few days I will deal with Andrew's points. Today, I examine his charge, set out in his book, that Israel is an expansionist state. Andrew Sibley is not the first to level this accusation at Israel. This is his comment on my review:

Is Israel expansionist? In making this claim I am simply looking at how the State of Israel has expanded its borders since 1948 with Palestinian areas reducing in size as Jewish settlements are established and expanded. That I think is factually correct.

In response to Andrew, let’s examine the background to the founding of Israel in 1948. The Balfour Declaration and the Palestine Mandate had in mind that what is now Israel and Jordan should be a 'Jewish National Home'. In 1920, the San Remo Conference assigned to Britain a mandate to establish a 'Jewish national home' in what is now Israel, Jordan and the Golan Heights.

Article 6 of the Preamble to the Mandate specified that Britain was 'to facilitate Jewish immigration to Palestine and encourage close settlement of the land, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes'.

The Mandate made no mention of Arab national or political rights in the land. It stated only that civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine, irrespective of race and religion, must be safeguarded. Arab riots in Palestine resulted in Winston Churchill issuing a White Paper in 1922, which handed almost 80% of the land promised to the Jews to the Hashemi family. What should have been the Jewish homeland east of the Jordan, by a stroke of the pen became the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

The UN Partition Resolution of November 29, 1947 (General Assembly Resolution 181 (II)) attempted to diminish still further the Jewish homeland by proposing a partition of Palestine into an Arab state and a Jewish state. The Jews agreed to the proposal but the Arabs rejected it and immediately proceeded to attack Jewish settlements.

When Israel declared its independence in May 1948, the fledgling state was immediately attacked by the surrounding Arab countries with the express intention of driving the Jews into the sea. The Palestinians had rejected the opportunity to have their own homeland and opted instead to destroy the newly-founded Jewish state. It was the Arabs who were expansionist, not the Jews.

Israel 'expanded' its borders in June 1967, by fighting a defensive war against Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, armed by Russia and assisted by Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Egyptian President Nasser declared that his objective was the 'destruction of Israel', and other Arab leaders expressed similar sentiments. Israel pleaded with Jordan not to enter the conflict but Jordan ignored Israel’s pleas and entered the conflict along with Syria and Iraq. The war ended with Israel’s victory; the Sinai, the Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip, Judea and Samaria (AKA 'the West Bank'), and the Old City of Jerusalem came under Israeli control.

When Egypt made peace with Israel, Israel handed back the Sinai peninsula. When Jordan made peace with Israel, Israel relinquished control of territories claimed by Jordan. Israel returned to parts of the West Bank in 2001 only in response to Arab terror. Syria has never made peace with Israel, therefore Israel retains the Golan Heights.

In 2000, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak met Yasser Arafat at the Camp David summit. At that summit Barak offered to withdraw from 97 percent of the West Bank and 100 percent of the Gaza Strip. He agreed to dismantle 63 isolated settlements. Barak also agreed that Arab neighbourhoods of East Jerusalem would become the capital of the new Palestinian state and that the Palestinians would maintain control over their holy places and have 'religious sovereignty' over Israel's most holy site, the Temple Mount.

Barak's proposal addressed the refugee issue, guaranteeing them the right of return to the Palestinian state and reparations from a $30 billion international fund. He also agreed to give the Palestinians access to water desalinated in its territory.

Israel offered generous concessions but Arafat rejected them and walked away from the table. Instead of putting forward a counter proposal, he rewarded Israel's generosity with the second Intafada.

Four years ago, Israel pulled all its people out of Gaza and Hamas expressed its gratitude by launching a lethal rain of missiles on southern Israel.

How, in the light of these facts, can anyone accuse Israel of being an expansionist power?

I am old enough to remember that within days of the end of the Six Day War, Israel made overtures to its enemies regarding a negotiated settlement and withdrawal from the captured territories, overtures that were firmly rejected by the Arab nations at the Khartoum Conference of August/September 1967. The Arab slogan coined at that conference was: 'No peace with Israel. No negotiations with Israel. No recognition of Israel'. This is still the position of Syria and various Palestinian terror groups, including Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad.

Expansionist? Israel is fighting just to retain the little territory it already possesses!

Replacement Theology's New Name

Andrew Sibley’s latest book Zion's New Name is a true curate’s egg: excellent in parts.

First, the good bits. Sibley is anxious to repudiate a theology that claims the church has replaced Israel and which denies the hope of any future blessing for national Israel. He also reminds us that God loves both Jews and Palestinians, that both Jews and Palestinians are in need of the gospel and that ‘Christians should support the work of evangelism to the Jews’ (p.125). He exposes the errors of some extreme Christian Zionists, notably John Hagee who, in his most recent book, argues that ‘Jesus only intended to be the saviour of the world, and refused to be the Jewish Messiah’ (p.115).

Sibley’s most helpful material is found in chapter 4, ‘Israel in the Old Testament Prophets’, in which he analyzes the promises of the reunification of Israel and Judah found in prophets such as Hosea, Micah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Zechariah. He draws a distinction between ‘Israel’ and ‘Judah’, the former being the northern tribes, sometimes referred to in the prophets as ‘Ephraim’. He demonstrates that the northern tribes of Israel, which were conquered and exiled by the Assyrians in the seventh century BC, were not ‘lost’, as is commonly supposed, but remained scattered in the lands to the east of Israel’s homeland. The prophesied reunification of the house of Israel with the house of Judah was to take place under a new David and under a new covenant and therefore the apostles, aware of these promises, concentrated their evangelistic efforts on the scattered Jews and Israelites.

Having said that, the book is marred by numerous errors of spelling, grammar, syntax and punctuation. But those errors are merely irritating compared to Sibley’s factual inaccuracies. Even though he claims he is not opposed to the state of Israel, Sibley appears to be ignorant about some facts about the modern state of Israel. He categorises Israel as ‘expansionist’ (even though the Israeli government forcibly ejected its own people from Gaza over years ago), nationalistic (what nation is not ‘nationalistic’ to some degree?) and an apartheid state (even though Israeli Arabs enjoy the same democratic rights as Israeli Jews). He imagines that there are ‘very severe laws against the evangelism of Jews in Israel’ (p. 15) when, in fact, there are no anti-evangelism laws, severe or otherwise. And in spite of the fact that the numbers of Messianic Jews in Israel is now estimated to be 15,000 and growing, Sibley believes ‘the State of Israel … shows no outward sign of repentance and conversion to Christ’ (p.14).

Last but not least, the book is confusing. Although Sibley’s avowed intent is to reject ‘Replacement Theology’ – the view that the church has ‘superseded or replaced Judaism’ – his main argument is that ‘most prophecies relating to Israel were fulfilled in and through Christ and in his church' and that ‘the church is spiritually, ethnically and legally Israel'. What is this if not Replacement Theology?

Zion’s New Name would have been a far better book if Sibley had concentrated his efforts on developing chapter 4. He has some good things to say but read it with care.

Former Swedish neo-Nazi confirms involvement in Auschwitz sign robbery

A former Swedish neo-Nazi suspected of involvement in the theft of the infamous Nazi German "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign from Auschwitz said he had acted as a middleman. "My role was to go get the sign in Poland. I was the middleman and was supposed to take care of the sale," Anders Högström, 34, told the Swedish daily Expressen. In 1994, he had founded the National Socialist Front, a Swedish neo-Nazi movement that he headed for five years before quitting and joining an association called Exit which helps youths quit extreme-right movements.

Polish prosecutors said last Wednesday they wanted to question three Swedish residents over the 18 December theft of the sign. Five Poles have already been arrested and charged with theft and damage. They face up to ten years in prison.

According to Expressen, Högström claimed the sign was to be sold for several million kronor which was to be used to finance terror attacks against the Swedish parliament and government. "But that was not something I wanted to be involved in or carry out, in any way," he told the paper. "I contacted the police immediately, as soon as the sign was stolen, and gave them all the information I had. I haven't committed any crime. I was the one who saw to it that the sign was found."

The sign above Auschwitz's entry gate has long symbolized the horror of the Nazi death camp in occupied Poland, which was in operation until Soviet troops liberated it on 27 January 1945.

World Jewish Congress