Posted on 10/24/2005 5:45:55 AM PDT by SJackson
Throughout October, a largely unseen wave of anti-Semitism has been washing up across North America in a series of conferences run by a Jerusalem-based organization called the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center.
At gatherings in Chicago and Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Sabeel-trained speakers have demonized Israel, with similar speeches expected later this month at their conferences in Denver and Toronto. Started by Palestinian Christians in 1989, Sabeel does not promote peace or a genuine understanding of the Middle East conflict but instead musters support for punishing Israel through divestment campaigns, part of its larger goal of dismantling Israel to make way for a Palestinian-dominated one-state solution.
I attended the two-day Sabeel conference held at Chicago’s Lutheran School of Theology, where I witnessed intolerance and prejudice against Jews and the Jewish State. I did not think I would witness this in America’s third largest city, especially at the close of yearlong celebrations of the 350th anniversary of the arrival of Jews in America and only 65 years after the Holocaust.
The Oct. 7-8 gathering in Chicago attracted about 200 people. At the conference, Palestinian activist George Rishmawi actually claimed that Israel uses a poison gas that weakens the muscles of Palestinian demonstrators so they can’t run away, and that the IDF quickly retrieves the canisters so that no one can identify the gas. This echoed of the blood libel stories that have caused Jews so much suffering in the past.
I wish people of good faith had been with me to hear the relentless litany of historical distortions and slander. Michael Tarazi, a Harvard-educated attorney and former advisor to Palestinian leaders, accused Israel of starting all the Arab-Israeli wars, saying Israel probably withdrew from Gaza because Israel has, “depleted all the usable drinking water.”
Tarazi also warned audience members, “not to be side-tracked from divestment from companies who do business in Israel by those who want to have dialogue about this.” Instead, he urged people to, “stick to your convictions because there is no point to having dialogue with people you disagree with.”
There were also a couple of Jewish presenters including professor Marc Ellis of Baylor University. Describing himself as an “outrageous Jew,” Ellis compared Israel to Nazi Germany, attacked some progressive Jews as racists, and claimed that Jews had taken the “wrong lesson from the Holocaust.”
He also showed photos of two of Judaism’s holiest objects, the Ark that holds the Torah and also a Torah scroll, both defaced by superimposed images of Apache helicopters. He said that this is what he thinks of when he looks at arks and Torahs.
Perhaps the well-meaning Christians who attended this event have not researched how the Sabeel center tries to give religious justification to, and also Christian support for, a radical Palestinian agenda. In 2001, Sabeel’s founder, the Anglican Rev. Canon Naim Ateek, wrote that, “Jesus is on the Cross again with thousands of crucified Palestinians around him…The Israeli government crucifixion system is operating daily.”
In 2005, Ateek said that Palestinians suffer as Jesus did: “We had the Contemporary Way of the Cross, the Via Dolorosa for Palestinians…These are the demolished homes, destroyed villages, checkpoints. Every one of those is a station of the cross, a station of suffering.” Such anti-Semitic images of deicide were thought to have been buried with the Holocaust, after which many Christian churches repudiated such rhetoric. But at the Sabeel conference in Chicago, no one asked Ateek to retract words he has used to degrade Judaism and Jews.
Throughout the Chicago talks by Ateek and his allies, the audience simply nodded, as though agreeing with the noxious statements and attacks. No one asked searching questions. No one sought out Israel’s side of the story, about the terrorist campaign that Israel has been trying to fend off, about how there cannot be reconciliation if Palestinian leadership does not accept genuine responsibility for terrorism or even accept Israel’s right to exist, or about how moderation and peace cannot emerge from such hateful presentations at Sabeel conferences.
Sabeel’s North American backers have organized the conferences in Cedar Rapids, Denver and Toronto. I fear that other well-meaning audiences will be deceived by Sabeel’s cloak as a Palestinian Christian group seeking peace, and thus unwittingly sponsor Sabeel’s hate-filled, deceptive programs.
Many Israeli policies can be criticized. But unwarranted is to have Israel maligned with echoes of old anti-Semitic canards and also hear Israel’s humanitarian efforts and reasonable compromises either ignored or twisted.
I am saddened to see such ugly rhetoric given free rein in America. How troublesome to see Christians sit quietly as Sabeel’s misguided friends speak in their name.
But mostly, I am sad to see such hatred erupting again, as it bodes badly for us all.
Roz Rothstein is national director of the non-profit Israel advocacy group StandWithUs, which in September premiered its 50-minute documentary, “Tolerating Intolerance: Hate Speech on Campuses.” StandWithUs is also a member of The Coalition for Responsible Peace in the Middle East.
Screw the professor from Baylor. It's long past time we stopped making nicey with these asshats.
"Sadly, we will see more and more of this. It is both manipulated by islam as well as it plays into their one true goal: the death of Jews everywhere. A palestinian I once was acquainted with told me straight out that it didn't matter where Jews were living - Israel, NY, LA, wherever - they had to be killed. Civilization as we know it cannot co-exist with these people and it's past time to stop playing games with them."
It is, indeed, very sad that in this "enlightened" age (and especially within living memory of the Shoah) we have to deal with this - but it is a FACT. The enemies of the Jewish People never sleep...they started in on the first Jew, Abraham (Nimrod put him in a furnace for believing in G-d), and have continued on to this very day. They may be quiet for a while, when it is tactically advantageous to do so, but they are always there.
And yet...millions of liberal Jews continue to push for or support gun control. Thankfully, there is an alternative point of view, embodied in Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership ("JPFO"), with the following website: http://www.jpfo.org/
Here are some interesting articles from the site (and there are MANY more):
The Beast Reawakens: Personal Challenge to All Jews to Defend Themselves
http://www.jpfo.org/jewishself-defense.htm
Carrying Firearms on Shabbat
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/english/newspaper/torah/ask-rabbi-12-Jun-02.htm
At What Point Does Paranoia Become Prudence?
http://www.jpfo.org/cklein.htm
Being a total tech-dummie I don't know how to research.
Why not just use a SAW? Come one, a "weakling" gas. What are they doing, pumping the Nebraska football teams locker room air into a can?
It's all too obvious who their hosts and audiences are: bleeding heart leftist "Christians" who are more leftist than Christian. The key words pop right out at you: "Ecumenical Liberation Theology."
Those are a combination of all the favorite buzzwords of modernist, leftist, Marxist, dissenting Christians. Cross South American "liberation theology," a favorite among heretical Catholics who love Marx better than Jesus, with "Ecumenical," a favorite among Catholics and Protestants alike who favor dumbing down their religions to the lowest common denominator of fuzzy leftism, and what do you get?
Yet more antisemitism of the left, the new darling of the postmodernist generation of academics.
There are several reasons the USA is targeted by the Communists and their fellow travelers, the Islamists, and that is one of them. To the Communists, the Party is God. For the Islamist, it is a vengeful Allah. Each practices "Thou shalt have no other God before Me" and "Death to the Infidels". Both are deadly serious.
Each must also eliminate the "Capitalist System" because it accentuates their ineptness and the fallacies of their failed systems.
We have the military power to thwart them so they must take us down from within or through murderous guerrilla warfare.
For those reasons we are their enemy. They are deadly serious and we, conservative Republicans, had better be, too.
First, the Jews make excellent litmus paper for testing political movements for tyrannic potential.
Second, if a "Christian" palestinian group thinks it has a future in Hezbollahstan, it's been burning something other than incense. The destiny of Christians in the Palestinian territories is clear: conversion or death.
Third, for all the noise the Left makes about the killer Israelis, for every Palestinian killed by the Isrealis, one or more is killed by other Palestinians.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
European Politics and the Holocaust
UK decides not to replace Holocaust Day
Report: Blair advisers urge that U.K. cancel Holocaust Day
Brits prefer 'genocide' over 'holocaust' [Don't want to offend ROP]
Sabeel's "just folks" are hopping on a bandwagon that's already established, though somewhat subtle, so far. And it's not only the "left" or "post-modernists."
This Marc Ellis is a prime example: Ellis.
He then spent two years working with the poor, and thereafter entered a three-year course of study and received his Ph.D. from Marquette University in Contemporary Intellectual and Religious History, where he was inducted into the Jesuit Honorary Society, Alpha Sigma Nu.
In 1980, Dr. Ellis joined the faculty of the Maryknoll School of Theology where he founded the Institute for Justice and Peace and the M.A. program in Justice and Peace Studies and was director of those programs until 1995.
The Jesuits of today are usually medium to far left, and the Maryknolls has been known for decades as a training ground for liberation theology types.
As for Baylor, it was a casualty of the "moderate" vs. conservative wars within the Southern Baptist Convention. The conservatives won the war for the most part, but the moderates hijacked Baylor Baptist University. It's not surprising that they'd hire a left-wing airhead like Ellis.
Leftist self hating Jews are all the rage but I have never known a Jew with the surname Ellis.
and I know a lot of Ellis folks.
True. And there are a few redneck Jew-haters too. But frankly Pat Buchanan has pretty well destroyed himself in the conservative community. Nobody respects him. And the rednecks are pretty isolated and have little influence.
The real danger is from the left. These are the guys who network in academia and our liberal churches and shape opinions. These are the guys who organize NGOs to work with the UN to further the cause of Muslim hatred.
It's the "freedom of speech" thing. Been observing past 10 years. Socialists and the cultishly insane are using "free speech" under the "religions" rubric -- similar to how the terrorists used our own planes on 9-11.
That is for sure.
Thanks all for the links.
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