When “peacemakers” incite to conflict they make murder respectable.
It has become axiomatic in some circles that the sole cause of the Arab- Israeli conflict is Israel, by which is really meant Israel’s existence. For many holding this view the “solution” is a single “binational” state as opposed to the two-state solution favored by the international community. These “one state” proponents also insist on a “right of return” for 1948 Palestinian refugees and their millions of descendants, amounting to a call for the elimination of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.
A conference promoting this vision, funded mostly by Protestant and Catholic groups, is being held this week in Tel Aviv. These Christian groups are themselves largely funded by European governments that officially support the two-state solution. The conference, then, undermines these governments’ own policies.
The event, “From Truth to Redress: Realizing the Return of Palestinian Refugees,” is organized by Zochrot, a tiny Israeli fringe group.
Israeli one-state advocates are so few that they have neither a constituency nor influence in Israel. For Zochrot, foreign funding is their lifeline; the conference was “made possible thanks to the generous support of: Misereor, Christian Aid, HEKS-EPER, CCFD, Finn Church Aid, Broederlijk Delen, AFSC, Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, Mennonite Central Committee, Trócaire, St. Het Solidariteitsfonds, Oxfam GB and private donors.”
NGO Monitor wrote each of the sponsors, and we received several replies.
France’s CCFD and Germany’s Misereor (both Catholic) wrote identical messages – including the same grammatical mistakes. They affirmed they are a “funding partner of Zochrot” and declared “refugee issues and refugee rights all over the world are of utmost importance to us.” But regarding funding they opted for fogginess: “Our privacy policies do not allow to disclose (sic) the amounts given to recipients.”
Belgium’s Broederlijk Delen, also Catholic, wrote a similar response: “We support the work of Zochrot as we believe refugee rights are important in any context and should be openly discussed.”
But regarding funding, they also chose murkiness: “With regard to details on funding, we wish to respect our partners’ privacy.”
What seems to be lost on these Christian groups is they are supported by public funds.
In 2012 Misereor received 114 million euros from the German government, CCFD received 1.1 million euros from the EU and another 368,000 euros from France, the Swiss government gave $12.7 million to HEKS and Broederlijk Delen received 6,891,347 euros from Belgium taxpayers.
As for the one-state formula itself, the onus for proving that this “solution” is workable is on the shoulders of its advocates. In Europe binational states have an unhappy history.
Czechoslovakia was one state, now it is two. Yugoslavia’s multi-national experiment ended in a horrific war that gave the world the term “ethnic cleansing.” Belgium, Spain and the UK each have strong national separatist movements (Flemish, Basque and Scottish respectively).
IN THE Middle East, the region most relevant to this discussion, concrete models of binational entities do not exist. The rights of non-Arab and non- Muslim minorities in Arab states are severely repressed, sectarianism is rending Syria, Iraq and Lebanon asunder, and the upsurge of violence against the region’s Christians should serve as a warning. Israel is the only Middle East country where democratic institutions are strong and minorities enjoy by right the full protection of the law.
Yet, these Christian funders are targeting Israel, and appear to be utterly unaware of the plight of their Middle Eastern coreligionists. What makes them think that Jews would fare better as a minority once Israel is forced to be a Muslim-majority state than do Christians today in Egypt, Syria or Iraq? This point is all the more pertinent considering the ethnic cleansing by Arab governments of 99 percent of their Jewish citizens after 1948. After Arab governments stripped them of their citizenship and property most Jewish refugees fled to Israel.
That two refugee populations resulted from the Arab-Israeli conflict, one Jewish, one Arab, is ignored by this conference’s organizers and funders. With all their moralistic rhetoric of refugee rights being “of utmost importance” “in any context,” these Christian groups are mute about the rights of nearly a million Jewish refugees from Arab states, and millions of their descendants.
Peacemakers, which is how these Christian aid groups view themselves, do not support efforts to erase one side of a conflict, which is what support for this conference means. The one-state formula is a recipe for war, and its proponents are exposed as uncompromising supporters of permanent conflict.
By dressing up as “peacemakers” the Christian aid societies supporting Israel’s demise bear truth to George Orwell who wrote, “Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
Is that how public funds ought to be spent?
The writer is chief programs officer for the Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor.
yamit82 Said:
YOU???????? Need my advice, Darlin????
honeybee Said:
Ok for the males but what about females?? 😛
yamit82 Said:
Would it possible to cut off their balls and turn them into ox?????
honeybee Said:
An enemy is an enemy. I never underestimate enemies. For me intention and motivation is what counts not the actual direct threat to the physical lives of their targets.
If it were up to me I would evict any individual and institutions from Israel associated with these groups, confiscate their properties and burn their churches. Missionaries associated with these churches would be arrested and placed with the worst of our Arab terrorists and then lose the keys.
yamit82 Said:
The problem with fatwas is finding someone to carry them out. This spring I issused a fatwa that the kitchen table MUST be sanded and re-finished, so far my fatwa has one unheeded, as has my fatwa concerning a new fridg. European Christian no longer go off to crusade.
Laura Said:
That would be a concern if Europe had an economy!!!!
yamit82 Said:
The WCC churches should be expelled from Israel and all members should be persona non grata. This is why the thought of christianity gives me nausea. Furthermore, the ongoing perpetrator of all these crimes are the europeans. They are so intertwined with christianity in that even when they become secular they are the jews enemy. They are the father at the beginning and the nurturing mother of anything that will destroy the jews. The scorpion and the frog, it is their nature.
EXPOSÉ: A Christian Fatwa Against Israel
The Global Church ignores the threats to itself from the very Palestinian Arabs it supports, for the sake of Israel-bashing.
The World Council of Churches, an ecumenical body which claims to represent 590 million Christians worldwide and based in Switzerland, will sponsor an event supporting the partition and Islamization of Jerusalem. The ”World Week for Peace in Palestine Israel” will go on from 22nd of September.
“This annual observance of a week of prayer, education, and advocacy calls participants to work for an end to the illegal occupation of Palestine, so that Palestinians and Israelis can finally live in peace. It has been more than 64 years since the partition of Palestine hardened into a permanent nightmare for Palestinians. It is now more than 45 years since the occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza overwhelmed the peaceful vision of one land, two peoples”.
By claiming that the Jewish people “occupied” Zion, the global Christians organization sides with the Islamic worldview and deletes 3.000 years of Jewish presence in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria.
This year’s goal is erasing any Jewish presence in the so called “holy basin”, an alliance of the Islamic mosques and the Christian sepulcher which will exclude the Jews from the Temple Mount. Read More
Europe is waging a relentless economic and diplomatic war against the Jewish state.
What they actually are, are willful advocates for Jewish genocide.
while these types of christians attack israel their so-called christian brothers are being slaughtered by the muslims they seek to protect. Is this irony? There is a connection between the christian complacency towards their brothers plight and the slaughters of their brothers. There is a connection between these christians’ jewish obsessions and their complacency towards their brothers. It is astounding that they feel no shame in their wholehearted abandonment of their own in order to pursue and harass the Jews. Perhaps they misread the covenant?
@ Eric R.:
Zochrot is an extreme anti-Zionist group. Note that you will not find a pro-Zionist movement on the Arab side. Only Jews can hate themselves enough to wish the destruction of their own country! I have said it in the past: Israel has less to worry about from the Arabs than it does from the Jews.
Why are the Israelis allowing this conference to occur on Israeli soil? Israel should BAN visitors known to advocate for genocide of the Jews, or particularly vociferous Jew-hating activists. In fact, she should pass EU style hate speech laws (which I am normally against as an American, but Israel has to play Europe’s game on this) which apply even to foreigners, so if they land on Israeli soil, they can be arrested, tried and imprisoned for advocating genocide against the Jews.