Posted on 06/29/2005 9:51:20 AM PDT by sionnsar
It looks as though the firestorm over the Anglican Consultative Council's anti-Israel vote will not die down any time soon as the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Dr. Shimon Samuels writes Rowan Williams:
The Simon Wiesenthal Centre is an international Jewish human rights organization with a worldwide membership of 440,000. Established in 1977, with headquarters in Los Angeles, it draws the lessons of the Holocaust to the analysis of contemporary issues of prejudice and discrimination. The Centre is an NGO in Consultative Status to ECOSOC, UNESCO and the Council of Europe.
When a Church (any church) calls for a boycott of Jews (anywhere on G-d’s earth), the Jewish collective memory refocuses. The lights dim and a film reel in our heads begins to unwind:
A fast backward to the charge of collective deicide, the Judas image of ultimate treachery, original sin, the curse of exile and eternal wandering, divine retribution, the figure of the Anti-Christ, Christianity’s substitution of Judaism "in spiritum" and the subsequent delegitimization of the people of Israel.
Disputations, forced conversions, Passover/ Easter blood libels, accusations of well-poisoning, importing plague and pestilence, the theft of Christian innocents, race defilement, white slave traffic.<
Pogroms, autos da fe, Inquisition burnings at the stake, burning synagogues and Yeshivas, burning of Holy scrolls and prayer books.
Cathedral statues of "the Church Triumphant" alongside "the Vanquished Synagogue", exclusion from land ownership, conspiracy theories, Protocols of the Elders of Zion, expulsions, boycotts, Kristallnacht, cemetery desecration, collaboration in deportation and extermination, SILENCE...
After two millennia, we thought that the film had ended, the lights had come back on as we flash forward to a sobered Christendom that would banish the shadows forever.
Archbishop, we were so wrong:
- only one people remains an endangered species
- only one State remains unambiguously threatened with extinction in the chambers of the United Nations system
- only one nation is still denied acknowledgement of its right to sovereign legitimacy
Archbishop, your vote, last Friday, for the Anglican Church’s economic disinvestment of companies that trade with the Jewish State is not only biased, not only in violation of freedom of commerce provisions of the European Union and the World Trade Organization, your vote is one more traumatic frame in that never-ending film.
From little Hugh of Lincoln, the pogrom of York, the expulsion by Edward the Confessor, you have telescoped Church history of Judeophobia in England, the liberal and tolerant land of my birth. You have widened the floodgates, for if it could happen there...!
Archbishop, when you say "divestment of Israel", we hear "Kaufen nicht bei Juden", and we are filled with an immense sadness at your damage to decades of inter-faith dialogue.
We can only hope to be comforted by those Anglican friends who will reject this new preaching of the Gospel of the Anti-Christ.
Dr. Samuels did not directly level the charge, and no doubt Dr. Williams and the rest of the Anglican leadership would angrily deny it if he did, but the ACC's anti-Israel resolution is perceived as an anti-Semitic act and interfaith relations with the Jews have been badly and perhaps irreparably strained. For my part, I find it impossible to dispute the charge. As far as the Anglican Communion is concerned, to paraphrase Stalin, the death of a Palestinian or a Muslim is a tragedy while the death of an Israeli or a Jew is a statistic.
Whether this new perception bothers the Anglican Communion at all remains to be seen; from the looks of things, the Communion does not yet seem to be aware that anything is wrong. But the perception bothers me intensely and I want no part of any organization that supports anti-Israel resolutions like the one the ACC just passed. If it is interested in repairing the damage it has done, the Anglican Communion must quickly and totally repudiate the Anglican Consultative Council's resolution.
Traditional Anglican ping, continued in memory of its founder Arlin Adams. *sadly pings*
The Gift That Keeps On Giving
6/28/2005
Reaction to the Anglican Consultative Council's anti-Israel resolution continues to come in. And it's increasingly clear that Anglican Christianity is losing ground and losing it fast:
The American Jewish Congress (AJC) has condemned the Anglican Church Consultative Council’s June 24 vote in favor of economic measures against Israel by its constituents.
Neil Goldstein, AJC Executive Director, stressed: "No amount of dissembling can hide the fact that this resolution encourages divestment from companies doing business with Israel in an attempt to isolate and stigmatize the Jewish State."
In condemning this "one-sided resolution about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," Goldstein labeled the resolution as "lacking in moral credibility."
AJC President Paul Miller stated: "At a time when Israelis are preparing to withdraw from Gaza, such unjust interference is a significant obstacle to peace in the Middle East.
"It is disheartening," he went on to say, "that the Council did not heed the words of the former leader of the Church of England, Lord George Carey, who warned that ’Israelis are already traumatized and feel that the world is against them,’ and who called the resolution ’another knife in the back’."
Lambeth can and probably will begin spinning this any day now. But no photo-ops, no interfaith gatherings, no sermons extolling the greatness of the Jews and not much of anything else can undo the damage that this single resolution has done to the Anglican tradition.
If Dr. Williams wants to fix things, he is going to have to get started quickly. Because the fact is that an Anglican resolution and the church that passed it are now seen as anti-Semitic by a very large number of Jews. With good reason.
When the Church makes political statements, trouble is afoot.
"If Dr. Williams wants to fix things, he is going to have to get started quickly. Because the fact is that an Anglican resolution and the church that passed it are now seen as anti-Semitic by a very large number of Jews. With good reason."
Nice to know that millions of dispossessed Palestinians are now finally achieving some victim status at the expense of Jews who have undeservedly claimed it for so long.
You have got to be kidding.
Agreed.
I think you guys have a very weird notion of the fate of Israel and like to draw on obsure biblical mythologies. Isreal exists, not because of God's plan, but because of billions of tax dollars and as part of the US's temporary appetite for colonialism in the region. Some of us in the west, like Rowan Williamson, wish to see some balance since obviously far more people live there than those claiming to be Jews and I feel the concerns of Christians should really be centred on the well-being of their own kind in Palestine.
I believe that this is another Sign that we are in the End Times. I am horrified at my former church turning against half of my heritage and I will stand with the Jews -- who are God's people as surely as this is His creation -- over the Anglicans who have clearly fallen under Satan's spell in all things.
He will prevail and He will spit the Anglican Communion out of His mouth because they are neither hot nor cold. Distance yourself from them as Lot was urged to distance himself from Sodom and Gommorah.
That letter above is beyond ridiculous.
This is not a case of Church turning against Jews. It's a case of extremely loose distribution of the 'anti-semite' sticker. AGAIN!
"Jews -- who are God's people as surely as this is His creation -- over the Anglicans who have clearly fallen under Satan's spell in all things."
Now THAT is extremely arrogantly put, and if anything causes anti-semitism it is bigoted statements like that.
The Anglicans had to issue the disinvestment resolution now. If they had waited a couple of years, no Anglicans would be left to receive the message. The IDF will deal with the terrorists, God will deal with the Anglicans, and investors will go where there is profit to be made.
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