Londonistan

by Melanie Phillips

  The way the Church could aid this process, the report suggested, was to apologize both for the Iraq war—which “appeared to be as much for reasons of American national interest as it was for the well-being of the Iraqi people”—and for everything the West had ever done in relation to Iraq, including its previous support for Saddam Hussein and the sanctions used against him. The bishops said that since the government was unlikely to show remorse, the churches should do so instead by organizing a major gathering with senior figures from the Muslim community to make a “public act of repentance.”22

  The first and obvious question this raised was to whom the bishops wanted to apologize. To the Ba’athists, perhaps, for removing Saddam, along with an apology to the Iraqis he terrorized? This moral muddle was amplified by the precedents they cited for such an act of reconciliation: the official statements by the Vatican expressing sorrow for the Christian persecution of the Jewish people throughout the ages, the repentance by the Anglican Church in Japan for its complicity in Japanese aggression during the Second World War, and the regret expressed by leaders of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa for their theological and political backing of apartheid.

  In other words they were comparing the removal of Saddam Hussein to the persecution of the Jews, the axis against democracy in World War II, and South African apartheid. But it was Saddam Hussein, the butcher of his own people and sponsor of terrorist murder against Israel and America, who was the brother in blood to the tyrants of history. To the bishops, however, it was “not terrorism but American foreign policy and expansionism that constituted ‘the major threat to peace.’ ” So the global jihad, the intention to restore the medieval caliphate, 9 /11 and the many attacks on America and other Western interests that preceded it apparently did not constitute “the major threat to peace.” Only America, a principal victim of this threat, filled that role in this hall of moral mirrors.

  But then, how could the bishops be expected to formulate a principled response to the threat of Islamist terrorism when in the next breath they revealed that they did not understand the difference between legitimate and illegitimate regimes? The bishops wrote:The Third Reich began as a democratic response to an “emergency” facing the German nation. Thereafter, whenever Adolf Hitler required more power he created emergencies, real or imagined, so as to justify the democratic suspension of democratic safeguards. Military coups in Africa and Latin America were all mounted on the basis of a “national emergency,” and to the extent that they received popular support, they were based on disillusionment with a democratic politics that had descended into chaos and the fear that things could only get worse. While it is evident that Western democracies are built on substantial foundations, it is equally clear that 9/11 represents a real and major escalation in the threats to such societies.23

  But although the Germans did originally elect Hitler, Nazism was never a democratic ideology; nor are military coups anything other than usurpations of the democratic political process. Yet on the basis of these entirely spurious analogies, the bishops argued against measures to protect Britain from further attack. The bishops thus displayed their profound lack of understanding not merely of religious fanaticism but of the moral difference between fascism and self-defense. Far from “undercutting” terrorism, their naïve and muddled proposals would hand it a clear victory.

  It is, perhaps, no surprise therefore that the Church should have taken the side of the Palestinian Arabs in the Israel/Arab impasse. A letter to the prime minister about the Iraq war, from the archbishops of Canterbury and York backed by every diocesan, suffragan and assistant bishop in the Church of England, showed how deeply the Church’s views about Iraq were dominated by the issue of Israel, which they approached solely from the perspective of Arab and Muslim opinion. There was no mention in this letter of the rights of Israel or the Jews as the principal victims of annihilatory aggression and prejudice. Instead, they wrote:Within the wider Christian community we also have theological work to do to counter those interpretations of the Scriptures from outside the mainstream of the tradition which appear to have become increasingly influential in fostering an uncritical and one-sided approach to the future of the Holy Land.24

  Their target was the Christian Zionists, regarded by the Church with as much horror as the “Christian fundamentalists” and “Christian right,” who it believes have hijacked American foreign policy; indeed, they are synonymous. Christians who support Israel take a variety of views about its policies, but the Anglicans see Christian Zionists as supporting an expansionist policy of “Greater Israel” that would colonize the disputed territories—which the Anglicans see as “Palestinian”—on the basis of the Biblical promise of the land made by God to the Jews. Indeed, for many Anglicans this aggressive form of Zionism is Zionism. They don’t believe there is any other form. And they don’t believe that Israel, however controversial some of its behavior might be, is fundamentally trying to defend itself against a war of extermination.

  Part of this flows from the simple fact that the Church has lost its moral compass along with its faith, a loss that now appears to prevent it from distinguishing between victim and victimizer whether it is looking at a Palestinian suicide bomber, the fall of Saddam Hussein, or a teenage serial mugger in the largely black south London district of Brixton. Partly, it is the defensive response of a religion that feels the ground disappearing beneath its feet. According to Canon Andrew White, the Church’s foremost Middle East specialist, demographic change has played upon a profound ignorance of the Middle East, both past and present. “Church knowledge of the Middle East is very superficial,” he said. “During the 1980s, the Church watched Islam becoming an increasingly significant force in Britain and the second largest religion. And the core cause for British Muslims was Palestine.” 25 As a result of this deep ignorance and instinct for appeasement, along with the prevailing view among the Christian and non-Christian left that the peoples of the third world were universal victims of Western society, the Anglicans and their counterparts in Scotland and Wales subscribed unquestioningly to the narrative of the Arab and Muslim world that painted Israel as a genocidal oppressor of the Palestinians, who only wanted a homeland of their own.

  This viciously unbalanced view is heavily promulgated by Christian NGOs. Christian Aid, for example, has presented for years a wholly one-sided and malevolently distorted account of Israel’s history and present actions, demonizing it as a ruthless aggressor and oppressor of innocent Palestinians, whose own violence towards Israelis is barely touched upon and, where it is, effectively justified. Many of Christian Aid’s assertions about Israel’s history have been the myths peddled by Palestinian propaganda, with manipulated images and half-truths designed to present Israel in the worst possible light.

  Israel’s antiterror policies have been depicted as an attempt to ruin the Palestinian economy and destroy its infrastructure. In Christian Aid’s materials, the oppression of the Palestinians has never been a “claim” but an objective reality. Israeli security measures have been repeatedly condemned without any acknowledgment that they are a response to terrorist violence. Christian Aid has failed to examine Palestinian incitement to hate and murder Israelis, or to acknowledge the humanitarian aid that Israel brings the Palestinians. And having thus demonized Israel, it has dwelt obsessively upon it, devoting infinitely less attention to the persecution of Christians by Muslims worldwide—which one might have thought would be the major preoccupation for a Christian charitable organization.26

  There are indications that Christian Aid may now be moderating its attitude in response to growing complaints; but its materials have had a huge effect on British attitudes. At a time when politicians have lost public trust, such NGOs are relied upon as dispassionate arbiters of truth. The result is that the distortions and libels that Christian Aid dispenses about Israel have been believed, not just among Christians but in the wider community. Not surprisingly, when the organization takes people on visits to the Holy
Land they return filled with virulent prejudice against Israel, with the settled conviction that it is doing an evil that has provoked an understandable reaction by the Arab Muslim world. And it is not just Christian Aid that has had this effect. Thousands of British Christians go every year on pilgrimages to the Holy Land run by organizations with similar attitudes. Such pilgrims spend virtually all their time visiting holy sites in Palestinian-run territory, staying in Palestinian hotels and listening to Palestinian tour guides. As a result, people who start out on such pilgrimages in a state of almost total ignorance of Israel and the Jews return filled with hatred towards them.27

  The result is a virulent animosity towards Israel in the established churches in Britain, which promulgate inflammatory libels against it. The archbishop of Wales, Dr. Barry Morgan, said in a lecture in 2003 on the relationship between religion and violence: “Messianic Zionism came to the fore after the Six Day War in 1967 when ‘Biblical territories were reconquered’, and so began a policy of cleansing the Promised Land of all Arabs and non-Jews rather than co-existing with them.”28 But there has been no such “cleansing” at all in the disputed territories. The only attempt at “cleansing” has been the Palestinian attempt to kill as many Israelis as possible. The same archbishop eulogized upon the death of Yasser Arafat:Yasser Arafat has given his life to the cause of the Palestinian people and will be remembered for his perseverance and resolve in the face of so many challenges and set-backs. When I heard the news of his death this morning, my initial reaction was to pray that in death Yasser Arafat will find that peace which only God can give and which was denied him in life.29

  So the Church all but canonized a terrorist mass murderer. In September 2004, it proceeded further to punish his victims. Despite an attempt by the archbishop of Canterbury to draw the sting from the decision, the Anglican Consultative Council commended the American Episcopal Church for divesting from companies whose corporate investments “support the occupation of Palestinian lands or violence against innocent Israelis” (the last phrase being plainly a meaningless gesture towards evenhandedness).

  Worse still, the ACC also endorsed an accompanying report by the Anglican Peace and Justice Network, a piece of venomous and mendacious Palestinian propaganda that provided a travesty of both history and present reality. Ignoring the offer by Israel in 2000 of a state of Palestine based on more than 90 percent of the disputed territories, it asserted that “there have been no significant positive steps towards the creation of the state of Palestine. On the contrary, the state of Israel has systematically and deliberately oppressed and dehumanized the people of Palestine.” It presented Israel’s military actions as a deliberate policy of oppression which had made Palestinian lives a misery, whereas the only reason that normal Palestinian life was impossible was the Palestinian war of terror against Israel. It described Israel’s security barrier as an “apartheid/segregation” wall and compared the territories to the “bantustans of South Africa,” despite the fact that the Arabs in Israel have full civil rights and the Arabs outside Israel are by definition not its citizens. Most egregiously of all, it compared “the concrete walls of Palestine” to “the barbed-wire fence of the Buchenwald camp.” Thus the Anglicans compared the Jews of Israel to the Nazis on account of a measure that aimed to prevent them from being murdered.30

  In February 2006, there was a repeat performance. This time, the Synod backed a call from the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East for the Church Commissioners to divest from “companies profiting from the illegal occupation,” such as Caterpillar Inc. An American company, Caterpillar manufactures bulldozers used by Israel in clearance projects in the disputed territories, and is also used by Palestinians in their own rebuilding work.31 This decision, which was backed by the archbishop of Canterbury (but which was revoked a month later purely on practical grounds), caused grave disquiet among a number of Christians in Britain and provoked a crisis in relations between the Church and Britain’s Jewish community. The chief rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks, launched a blistering attack, arguing that Israel needed “support, not vilification” when it was facing enemies such as Iran and Hamas that were sworn to eliminate it, and that the decision would have “the most adverse repercussions” on relations between Christians and Jews in Britain.32

  The extreme viciousness behind such a wholesale inversion of truth and morality by the Church, and the extent to which this monstrous mindset has captured its establishment, cannot be explained simply by the Church having lost its way, succumbed to left-wing orthodoxies or panicked in the face of British demographic change. The real motor behind the Church’s engine of Israeli delegitimization is theology—or, to be more precise, the resurgence of a particular theology that had long been officially consigned to ignominy. This is “replacement theology,” sometimes known also as “supercessionism,” a doctrine going back to the early Church Fathers and stating that all God’s promises to the Jews—including the land of Israel—were forfeit because the Jews had denied the divinity of Christ.

  This doctrine lay behind centuries of Christian anti-Jewish hatred until the Holocaust drove it underground. The Vatican officially buried it, affirming the integrity of the Jewish people and recognizing the State of Israel. This was because the Catholic Church faced up to the excruciating role it had played over centuries in dehumanizing and demonizing the Jewish people, a process which had paved the way for the Holocaust. But the Anglican Church failed to conduct a similar process, leaving unaddressed and unresolved the key issue of how in doctrinal terms it should regard the Jews. The ancient calumny that the Jews were the murderers of God and had denied His love thus still had resonance for Anglicans. So when Arab Christians reinterpreted Scripture in order to delegitimize the Jews’ claim to the land of Israel, this kick-started replacement theology, which roared back into the imaginations, sermons and thinking of the Anglican Church.

  This revisionism held that Palestinian Arabs were the original possessors of the land of Israel. The Anglican bishop of Jerusalem, Riah Abu el-Assal, claimed of Palestinian Christians: “We are the true Israel. . . . no-one can deny me the right to inherit the promises, and after all the promises were first given to Abraham and Abraham is never spoken of in the Bible as a Jew. . . . He is the father of the faithful.”33

  Another Palestinian Christian cleric, Father Naim Ateek, is a favorite thinker among many Anglican bishops, with whom he enjoys personal friendships going back many years. His influence in the Church is immense, not least through his Sabeel Centre in Jerusalem, a source of systematic demonization of the Jewish state. Ateek, who claims to accept Israel’s existence, profoundly undermines it on a theological level by attempting to sever the special link between God and the Jews. His book Justice and Only Justice inverts history, defames the Jews and sanitizes Arab violence. Modern antisemitism gets precisely one paragraph; Zionism is portrayed not as the despairing response that it was to the ineradicable antisemitism of the world, but as an aggressive colonial adventure. Courageous Jews are those who confess to “moral suicide” and who say that Judaism should survive without a state; real antisemitism, says Ateek, is found within the Jewish community in its treatment of the Palestinians.

  The real sting of this analysis lies in the liberation theology on which it is based. Ateek makes clear that the existence of the Jewish state has thrown the interpretation of Scripture into turmoil for Palestinian Christians, for whom this calamity calls into question the integrity of God. There is no indissoluble link, he says, between Israel and God, who is a deity for the whole world. Zionism was a retrogression into the Jews’ primitive past. God’s choice of Israel for the Jews was merely a paradigm for His concern for every land and people. While such a universal blessing does not exclude Jews or Israel, he writes, “neither does it justify their invoking an ancient promise—one that betrays a very exclusive and limited knowledge of God in one stage of human development—in order to justify their uprooting an entire people and expropriating their land in the tw
entieth century. To cling only to the understanding of God in those limited and exclusive passages is to be untrue to the overall Biblical heritage.”34

  Ateek thus uses the Bible to delegitimize the Jewish state by misrepresenting the Jews’ relationship with God. He goes further: having accused the Jews in Israel of systematically oppressing the Palestinians, he inverts God’s promise to the Jews by saying that God takes the side of the oppressed and “can only will and affirm a state that is based on justice.” Not only is this not true, but it is not relevant to Israel’s existence, which was not based on divine revelation but on a resolution of the United Nations.

  Elsewhere, Ateek has recycled the charge of deicide against the Jews and directed the hostility it arouses against Israel. In December 2000, he wrote that Palestinian Christmas celebrations were “marred by the destructive powers of the modern-day ‘Herods’ who are represented in the Israeli government.” In his 2001 Easter message, he wrote: “The Israeli government crucifixion system is operating daily. Palestine has become the place of the skull.” And, in a sermon in February 2001, Ateek likened the Israeli occupation to the boulder sealing Christ’s tomb. With these three images, Ateek has figuratively blamed Israel for trying to kill the infant Jesus, crucifying him and blocking the resurrection of Christ.35