Friends of Sabeel will host a conference on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict here in Seattle February 19-20th at St. Mark’s Cathedral.  Among the speakers will be Neve Gordon, professor at Ben Gurion University, whose Los Angeles Times op ed supporting the BDS movement was hailed and derided around the world, leading to denunciation by his own university president and an attempt to sack him.

I’ve organized the following media panel on Saturday, February 20th at 3:15 PM:

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in the Media

Richard Silverstein, author of Tikun Olam, Israeli-Palestinian peace blog
Bruce Ramsey, Seattle Times editorial writer
Larry Johnson former foreign editor, Seattle Post Intelligencer and author, Looking for Trouble, foreign affairs blog

The panel will examine the nature and quality of reporting on the conflict in both the U.S.:

1. Getting more & better coverage into the media
2. Making coverage more accessible to the average American
3. the collapse of print media: how does it alter the landscape for coverage
4. Where do people get their coverage of the conflict?
5. Critique of media coverage of I-P conflict: why is so much, so bad?
6. Political issues that should be covered and aren’t?
7. Improving communications between Israeli, Palestinian and U.S. media and peace activists
8. Role of digital media, social networking in expanding access to news about the conflict

If you live in or near Seattle, I hope you can make it.

Several weeks ago, a local progressive Jewish congregation, Kadima, hosted a Shabbat talk by Canon Naim Ateek, a Palestinian Christian anti-Occupation cleric.  Two days before the event, the Seattle Jewish federation mailed a letter to Kadima telling it that it was making a big mistake in hosting an anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, Jew-hating Palestinian speaker.  Needless, to say Ateek is none of those things.  Thankfully, Kadima did not cancel his talk.

Unfortunately for the community, very few people knew what the letter actually said since those who wrote it and those who received it refused to divulge it.  A brave soul did provide the letter to me, which is the only way that you know what it said.  I have already critiqued the inadequacies of the letter and criticized those who signed it.  I have also praised those who were asked and refused to sign it.

I singled out for condemnation David Brumer, a signatory of the letter and a board member of the hardline Israel advocacy group, StandWithUs.  Unlike some of the others who signed, Brumer proudly used his employer and job title along with his signature.  He is a social worker at the Kline Galland Home, where he presumably attempts to ease the burdens of elderly Jews in our community.  Apparently, Kline Galland, a federation funded agency, has no problem with Brumer confusing his partisan political activities with his job.  I have written to the Home’s two senior executives to clarify the agency’s policy on this matter.  They haven’t replied.

Brumer took my attack personally, VERY personally.  In fact, in an e-mail to me he called me “deranged,” a “fraud,” and “fascinated” with gay porn.  A word about the latter charge: in a recent blog post I noted that StandWithUs has recruited American gays to take Israel junkets in order to co-opt their support for Israel.  Alongside this, the Israeli foreign ministry has targeted Iran’s intolerance for gays as a point of leverage in its efforts to set the stage for an attack on Iran.  I have little doubt that StandWithUs’ journey into the gay world is directly connected to the efforts against Iran.

I wrote a critical blog post about a gay porno movie filmed in Israel with an all-Israeli cast.  That was how Brumer managed to dredge up the homophobic smear that I had a “subconscious fascination” with gay porn.  Here is the text of his message to me:

Solipsist that you are, it occurred to me that you may remain unaware of the fact that I’ve helped expose you to the world for the fraud, hypocrite, and paranoid narcissist that you are, in my very own blog, BRUMSPEAK. Check it out. It circulates widely.

Btw, the gay porn hasbara shtick is very creative. Only a deranged mind like yours could come up with that one. Perhaps some subconscious fascination with the subject?

Keep in mind, this is a Jewish leader who the federation asked to sign the Kadima letter because it found him to be a credible figure in the community.  Also, keep in mind that Brumer signed a 2004 Derech Eretz statement calling for all signatories to:

…Exhibit…respect and communication, trusting in each other’s good intentions, and rejecting personal or malicious attacks, as we debate issues pertaining to Israel, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, peace in the Mideast, and the wider Jewish community.

This is a community leader who also called for me to be “spanked” for holding the views I do.  Since he sat on the board of Congregation Beth Sholom at the time (where I am a member), I had to ask the synagogue president to intercede and end the slanders.  Thankfully, she did so.  Now that Brumer is no longer bound by such strictures (he’s off the board), he’s unburdened himself and unbuttoned his mouth.

I freely acknowledge that I have used strong language in my criticism of both Brumer and the attacks on Naim Ateek and Kadima in the federation letter.  I have called some statements by both lies and distortions.  But unlike Brumer, I have documented my claims here in this blog.

In an e-mail, the president of the federation, Richard Fruchter, sensibly tried to distance himself from Brumer saying he is not a member of the Israel committee which created the letter and not affiliated with federation.  The problem is that the federation asked Brumer to sign the letter thereby affiliating itself with him and his extremist views.  Fruchter sees Brumer’s smears against me as a dispute between two individuals in which the agency has no interest.

But the problem once again is that Brumer and federation are locked into a tight embrace.  They invited him to sign.  He co-opted his employer, a federation agency, in signing.  It seems to me that they’re up to their eyeballs in this and somebody should have some explaining to do.

I was tickled by Brumer’s claim that his blog “circulates widely.”  Alexa ranks it 14-million which does not constitute “circulating widely.”  Unless he really meant “circulates widely within my own family and among StandWithUs militants.”  I was also tickled by his references to psychological-therapeutic jargon in attempting to [mis]diagnose me.  It’s as if he needs to dust off all the theories he learned in social work school to prove he can apply them to his clients and wield them as a cugdel against his enemies.  If he keeps this up he might just give the vocation of social work a bad name.

Returning to the federation letter, it was signed by only 12 community leaders (two of whom work for federation).  Yet the letter was circulated to every rabbi and community leader in the city, scores, if not hundreds of individuals.  The fact that only 12 signed is a good sign.  It means that many leaders of our community thought the letter was a bad idea.  I’m hoping there are some federation board members who are asking some pointed questions of Richard Fruchter as I write this.  One question I’d like asked is why the Israel committee is such a monolith.  Why doesn’t it have a mandate that compels it to approach the Israel issue in a diverse way that encourages debate?  Why do the local Israel lobby groups, via this committee, have a stranglehold on the communal agenda on this subject?

One of my major criticisms of the mainstream community is that it exists in an echo chamber.  Jewish leaders largely don’t want to hear diverse voices in their community.  The problem with doing this is that by narrowing the scope of what is considered kosher, you end up with blunders like this letter.

Let’s have a dialogue about this within the community.  Let’s learn a lesson.  Let’s figure out how we can encourage a broad debate about such a critical issue and not smear our fellow Jews just because they don’t see things the same as us.  Instead of seeking ways to exclude Brit Tzedek and Kadima from the community, as the Israel committee was seeking to do, let’s embrace them.  Let’s end the grandstanding and wagging fingers represented by the Ateek-Kadima letter.

I’m looking forward to the next major community program the Israel committee plans providing a balanced, diverse perspective on whatever issue it addresses.  And I don’t mean “diverse” by David Brumer’s standards.  I mean “diverse” by Kadima’s standards or any number of other local Jewish peace organizations who are largely omitted from the organized community’s discussions.  Federation leaders–do you think you can do this?

The federation recently announced it has had a down campaign.  Allocations to agencies are being cut.  Of course, there are lots of reasons for this, many of them economic.  But Jews in this town are sophisticated, articulate, progressive and concerned with social justice.  Many don’t like what they see going on in Israel.  Many don’t agree with the perspective offered by the Israel committee or StandWithUs.  In fact, a number of polls indicate that Jewish young people are more turned off than ever from Israel in the aftermath of the bloody conflicts in Lebanon and Gaza.

If the federation continues preaching to this relatively small choir, it can’t help its Campaign.  It can’t help it’s outreach efforts to the next generation of donors.

Derech Eretz Israel 2004 statement

In the midst of the controversy over the Seattle Jewish federation letter sent to Kadima denouncing its hosting of Palestinian anti-Occupation cleric Canon Naim Ateek, Rainer Waldman Adkins referred in a JTNews interview to a “community protocol” that required those who created this letter to follow a path other than the one they chose.

When challenged by Rob Jacobs, StandWithUs’ Seattle director, who claimed my characterization of this document as an Israel Accord was a fiction and that the document didn’t exist–I decided to dig the document up. And guess what, the document that never existed was signed by none other than Rob Jacobs! Must be a case of severe memory loss. Or perhaps Rob only remembers those things it’s convenient for him to remember?

At any rate, here is the text of the Derech Eretz Israel Statement 2004 (pdf). You may click on the image to open the full sized version:

We represent a broad spectrum of opinion within the Jewish community. We frequently disagree on issues relating to Israel, including the best path towards security and well-being for Israel and the Jewish people.

Especially in trying times, such as during the upcoming Gaza disengagement, we expect vigorous debate and disagreement in Israel and between Jews everywhere, including here in Washington State.

While we have differences of opinion, we hope with this statement to make it very clear that Israel is always close to all our hearts and souls. Further, we are united in our commitment to respectful, constructive and civil dialogue concerning Israel. Such behavior strengthens our collective support for Israel and our community.

Therefore,
•We commit to practice Derech Eretz, exhibiting and nurturing respect and communication, trusting in each other’s good intentions, and rejecting personal or malicious attacks, as we debate issues pertaining to Israel, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, peace in the Mideast, and the wider Jewish community.

Further, in spite of our differences, together we publicly state that we agree on several core principles:

• Israel has the right to exist, in peace, as the Jewish State.
•We support Israel’s efforts to maintain itself as a democratic and pluralistic society, despite the pressures faced both within and without.
• Israel has the right, as a sovereign nation, to secure and recognized borders, to defend itself, and to protect its citizens.
•We support Israel’s efforts to find a peaceful solution to the conflict in the Mideast.
•We fervently hope and pray for peace within Israel, among Jews everywhere, between Israelis and Palestinians, and between Israelis and all peoples of the region.

We therefore pledge ourselves to do all in our power to assist Israel in every way at this difficult time.

This is the pertinent phrase which Rainer referred to in expressing his disappointment with the federation’s attack on Kadima:

We commit to…exhibiting and nurturing respect and communication, trusting in each other’s good intentions, and rejecting personal or malicious attacks

A reasonable person would read that and imagine that the federation’s Israel committee, finding fault with Kadima’s hosting of Ateek would communicate that to the group in a timely and respectful way that would allow an exchange of views on the subject. The statement makes no mention of grandstanding or scoring propaganda points, which is clearly what Rob Jacobs and those who spearheaded the letter but who did not sign it, sought to do.

In fact, if I didn’t know better I might think that the letter might be an opening salvo in a campaign to delegitimize groups like Brit Tzedek and Kadima and prohibit them from participating in the deliberations of the Israel committee.

In Rob’s twisted interpretation of this document it was Kadima’s obligation to come to the Israel committee before it agreed to host the event. It’s incumbent on the Jewish progressive community to get a heksher to host events that might be controversial for Rob and other local Israel lobby groups.

Would you care to admit your error, Rob?

Canon Naim Ateek: why is the pro-Israel far right so afraid of this man?

No. those aren’t my words nor my opinion.  They are the words of a CAMERA representative telling Palestinian cleric, Naim Ateek why they’ve targeted him so viciously.  Canon Ateek is an Episcopalian minister living in Jerusalem who is an Israeli citizen and founder of Sabeel, a group devoted to the principles of Christian liberation theology.  Ateek is a strict adherent of non-violence, a supporter of a two-state solution, and believes in Jews, Christians and Muslims sharing Jerusalem.  He opposes Palestinian terror and Israel’s use of massive violence to maintain the Occupation.

But you wouldn’t know any of that from the attacks on Ateek by CAMERA.  To them, he is an anti-Semite who supports the elimination of Israel.  In likening Palestinian suffering to the Crucifixion, the cleric’s opponents claim (without proof) that he likens Israelis to Christ-killers.

Today, Ateek spoke to a Kadima Shabbat service here in Seattle.  It was, all in all rather an unremarkable event held in the backyard of  Kadima’s new building in a slightly ramshackle former private home under two rather unwieldy umbrellas to shield worshipers from the hot sun.  What the Palestinian said would also be rather unremarkable if it had been a sermon delivered in Israel.  He began by noting that this was the first time he had been invited to speak as part of a Jewish religious service (he had spoken once before at a synagogue, but after services).

He noted with pleasure that the congregation had sung Hinei Ma Tov U-ma Naim, a song which notes how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together.  It reminded him of a Boy Scout Jamboree he’d attended in England along with Israeli Jewish scouts.  During the entire trip they sang this song many times together.  Clearly the sparkle in his eye indicated the joy of this memory and perhaps more innocent times.

You might think: what could any Jew find that is offensive in this man or his views?  If you did, you would be underestimating the poison of rightist pro-Israel groups like CAMERA and Stand With Us.  The latter group’s local Seattle office, under the direction of Rob Jacobs and board member David Brummer (who is also social worker at the Jewish federation-supported Kline Galland Home here in Seattle), inveigled the Jewish federation and supposedly liberal communal leaders like Rabbi Daniel Weiner to send a letter two days before the Shabbat event attacking Ateek and Kadima for hosting him.

If SWUwasn’t out to score cheap points, but had really wished to have a discussion about the issue, it and the other signatories could easily have approached Kadima a month ago when it began publicizing the Shabbat talk.  By sending their letter 48 hours prior they confirmed their interest in scoring points in a propaganda war against Ateek and any Palestinian leader who presents a viable, moderate face.  What is sad is that the federation and these liberal leaders allowed themselves to be co-opted by CAMERA/Stand With Us lies.  In effect, the federation became a fellow traveler to SWU’s extremist pro-Israel agenda.  In the future, they ought to examine much more carefully any project to which SWU invites them.

After the Canon’s talk, I asked him why he believed that the pro-Israel far-right was so obsessed with him and why they felt the need to lie about his beliefs.  He recounted a story of an encounter he had with a leader of CAMERA to whom he asked precisely the same question.  The fellow replied : “You’re worse than Hamas.”  What he meant was something like the following:  We know how to fight Hamas.  They are violent.  They are terrorists.  The world understands what they are.  But you are a wolf in sheep’s clothing.  People see you and hear your moderate words and believe that perhaps the Palestinians aren’t so bad after all.  Perhaps Israel should return the land and give Palestinians a state of their own.

Broken CAMERA and Stand With Them are frightened by a non-violent Palestinian who speaks out strongly against Israeli injustices and in favor of Palestinian non-violent resistance.  Non-violence in a Palestinian context is an alien concept to the pro-Israel right.  Just look at the meretricious nonsense an otherwise fine observer like Gershom Gorenberg wrote in the Weekly Standard in which he asked where the Palestinian Gandhi was (why he didn’t think of Ateek I have no idea).

To many Israeli and Diaspora Jews there is only one kind of Palestinian: one who embraces violence and hatred of Israel to advance his political agenda.  This Palestinian wishes Israel gone and Israelis washed into the sea.  To these people, Palestinians are bloodthirsty and cruel.  Precisely the opposite of what we know Jews to be: cultured, humane, life-affirming.

So what is CAMERA and SWU to make of a Palestinian such as Ateek?  Well, he must be a fake.  A two-faced clever impostor who conceals what he really believes and tailors his message to whatever his audience happens to be.  To Kadima he is a mild-mannered uncle speaking of the beauty of an Israeli folk song.  While to a Palestinian audience he spouts hate and blood.

This is how poisoned the minds of the pro-Israel right have become.  I have reviewed in detail some of the attacks on Ateek.  They are standard rhetorical operating procedure for ideologues like David Horowitz and Daniel Pipes.  You begin with a small fact from the writing or speeches of your victim.  But you don’t stop there.  You take off on an extended fraudulent manipulation of that fact and turn it into something that isn’t remotely true.

Here is an example.  How does Ateek become a “one-stater” in the eyes of the his enemies?  He made this statement in one of his books:

It has taken me years to accept the establishment of the State of Israel and its need- although not its right - to exist. I now feel that I want it to stay, because I believe that the elimination of Israel would mean greater injustice to millions of innocent people who know no home except Israel.

If you parse this passage carefully you will note that Ateek does accept a two-state solution, with the caveat that Palestinian suffering causes him to be unable and unwilling to concede that Israel has a right to exist.  That is, since Israel’s existence necessitates a great injury to the Palestinian people, he can never concede Israel’s right to exist.  But he can concede its need to exist.  In other words, Ateek understands that pragmatically Israel must exist (and he said precisely this today in his talk) because of the suffering of the Jewish people.

For some strange reason, Israel and some of its supporters believe the Palestinians ought to bow down and sing Hatikvah celebrating Israel’s existence.  That is why Bibi Netanyahu demands that the Palestinians accept Israel as a Jewish state.  But this is foolish.  For Israel to exist does not require its neighbors to accede to Israel’s self-definition.  What does a Canadian care what form of government the U.S. has?  And what business is it of theirs anyway?  All that is required is for America’s neighbors to accept that we exist and have relations with us on that basis.

Do I wish that Palestinians could concede Israel’s right to exist?  Yes.  But am I surprised that they cannot?  No.  Think of the reasons why: Israel has never come to terms with the Nakba and the crime committed against the Israeli Arabs displaced by the 1948 war.  If Germany was a state which never repudiated the crimes of the Nazis what would the Jewish attitude toward that country be?  We would never make peace with such a Germany.

To be clear, I am not comparing the magnitude of the respective crimes against Palestinians and Jews.  But I am comparing the respective responses to those crimes.  In other words, until Israel comes to terms with the injustice of the Occupation and the Nakba we cannot expect Palestinians to fully reconcile themselves to Israel.

We can expect them to accept Israel’s existence, but nothing further than that.

In case Ateek’s comments are too vague for some readers, here is a less categorical statement on the same subject:

“The preservation of Israel as a Jewish state is important not only to Israeli Jews but to Jews all over the world. I believe that we must honor their wish and accept it. In fact, the Palestinians should eventually guarantee the survival of Israel by accepting it as a Jewish state”

So CAMERA, Rob Jacobs and David Brumer, why do you lie so shamelessly about Naim Ateek?

Canon Naim Ateek

July 18-20, 2009

Canon Naim Ateek is an Episcopalian priest, and often referred to as “The Desmond Tutu of Palestine”.  He was born in the Palestinian village of Beisan, south of the Sea of Galilee, and grew up in Nazareth. Ateek established the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem in 1991. Before that, he served as Canon of St. George’s Cathedral in Jerusalem and as a parish priest in Haifa and Nazareth.  www.sabeel.org

He is scheduled to speak on:

SATURDAY, JULY 18^th

Kadima House, 10:00 to noon - 12353 8th Ave. NE, Seattle 98125

This service will be the first time that Ateek has been a guest at an American Jewish congregation

Ascension Episcopal Church, 6:30 PM – 2330 Viewmont Way West,  Seattle
Reservations: $50 at Brown Paper Tickets (800) 838-3006
www.brownpapertickets.com

SUNDAY, JULY 19^th

Saint Marks Cathedral – 1245 Tenth Ave. East, Canon Naim Ateek will preach at the regular 9 and 11 am services.

MONDAY, JULY 20^th

First Presbyterian Church, – 2936 Rockefeller Avenue, Everett, lunch with Canon Naim Ateek featured speaker.  12 noon to 2:00 PM   Reservations by calling 425-259-7139.  Leave name and number attending.

Ateek’s newest book is A Palestinian Christian Cry for Reconciliation, which will be available on his July tour in Western Washington.

The Boston Globe is the latest mainstream media source to be taken in by the CAMERA-David Project-Campus Watch propaganda machine. They’ve allowed Dexter Van Zile, CAMERA “Christian media analyst” (what exactly does this mean?) to accuse SABEEL of in effect hanging nooses around the necks of Jews via the group’s alleged anti-Israel positions.

Naim Ateek: the man who never called Israelis “Christ-killers”

First, a word about SABEEL: it is the leading Palestinian Christian anti-Occupation organization. Its leader, Naim Ateek, is a close friend and ally of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who had spoken controversially at several SABEEL national conferences. SABEEL stands for non-violent resistance to the Occupation and a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. To be candid, I would say that SABEEL does not embrace a two-state solution because it thinks this is the most moral position available. But rather it accepts this position because it seems the most viable and pragmatic given the circumstances (that neither Israel nor Israelis would accept any other resolution).

To get the true hysteria of Van Zile’s diatribe, read how he likens SABEEL’s views on Israel to the recent hanging noose incidents in Louisiana and at Columbia University’s Teacher’s College:

IF A church in Boston announced that it was renting space to a self-described peace group whose leader hung nooses from trees in former slave-holding states, the interfaith community would be outraged, the church would be condemned, and the wisdom of its pastor and governing council would be called into question, with good reason.

Any organization led by someone who would display an image with such a bloody and violent history would immediately be repudiated by people of good will. Virtually everyone knows that a noose hanging from a tree is a prelude to a lynching. Its display is a vile act intended to intimidate African-Americans and other minorities into submission. It is a vestige of the Old South that has been discarded by all but the irredeemably racist.

Now, go and read the entire column and tell me where he remotely proves that SABEEL holds such racist views of either Jews or Israel. In fact, you won’t find more than a few words actually quoted from SABEEL in the entire piece. So how does Van Zile have the audacity to make such a preposterous claim and how does the Globe justifying printing such meretricious nonsense?

Here is Van Zile’s second outrageous trope–SABEEL allegedly sees Israelis as “Christ-killers:”

the leader of the group in question – the Rev. Dr. Naim Ateek, founder of Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center – invoked the anti-Semitic trope of Jews as Christ-killers during the second intifada, when Palestinian suicide bombers were murdering citizens of Israel…

The portrayal of Jews as Christ-killers has contributed to untold violence and hostility toward the Jewish people, but for some reason, Old South Church is allowing Sabeel and Ateek, an Anglican priest from Jerusalem, the use of its worship space…

For example, his 2000 Christmas message portrayed Israeli officials as Herod, who, according to the Christian gospel, murdered all the infants of Bethlehem in an attempt to kill the infant Jesus.

Again, where is the evidence? Not here, certainly. Ateek did NOT “portray Israeli officials as Herod” nor did he claim they “murder infants in Bethlehem.” In truth, SABEEL is quoted (in Wikipedia, and again through the veil of Van Zile’s truncated quotations of what he claims as SABEEL-Ateek statements–I would be grateful if a reader could find the original SABEEL sources for these elided quotations) as likening the Occupation to a Palestinian crucifixion:

“In this season of Lent, it seems to many of us that Jesus is on the cross again with thousands of crucified Palestinians around Him …The Israeli government crucifixion system is operating daily.” Similarly, in a February 2001 sermon, Ateek likened the occupation to the “stone placed on the entrance of Jesus’ tomb. … This boulder has shut in the Palestinians within and built structures of domination to keep them in. We have a name for this boulder. It is called the occupation.”

Thanks to Rick Charnes for finding the original source at the SABEEL site:

As we approach Holy Week and Easter, the suffering of Jesus Christ at the hands of evil political and religious powers two thousand years ago is lived out again in Palestine. The number of innocent Palestinians and Israelis that have fallen victim to Israeli state policy is increasing.

Here in Palestine Jesus is again walking the via dolorosa. Jesus is the powerless Palestinian humiliated at a checkpoint, the woman trying to get through to the hospital for treatment, the young man whose dignity is trampled, the young student who cannot get to the university to study, the unemployed father who needs to find bread to feed his family; the list is tragically getting longer, and Jesus is there in their midst suffering with them. He is with them when their homes are shelled by tanks and helicopter gunships. He is with them in their towns and villages, in their pains and sorrows.

In this season of Lent, it seems to many of us that Jesus is on the cross again with thousands of crucified Palestinians around him. It only takes people of insight to see the hundreds of thousands of crosses throughout the land, Palestinian men, women, and children being crucified. Palestine has become one huge golgotha. The Israeli government crucifixion system is operating daily. Palestine has become the place of the skull.

…Four things are clear today. Jerusalem still does not know what makes for peace; Jesus is weeping and his tears are mixed with many other people’s tears; the number of people who are carrying their crosses is multiplying phenomenally; and the women of Palestine as well as many Jewish women are weeping over the many killed and wounded innocents. This is the reality of life today.

In the midst of this hopeless and confusing situation, inundated with injustice and death, we refuse to give in to despair. We want to affirm the power of resurrection and life…The day will come, and we pray soon, when joy will replace grief, trust will remove fear, justice will triumph over oppression, and reconciliation will supplant alienation…We will, therefore, continue in our struggle against the evil structures that dominate and oppress. Our hope is in God. The resurrection is coming, and it will bring with it the promise of a new life and liberation for all the people of our land.

Nary a mention of “Christ-killers.”

Returning to Van Zile’s journalistic travesty, here again he does violence to the truth:

With these…images, Ateek has figuratively blamed Israel for the attempted murder of the infant Jesus, the crucifixion of Jesus the prophet, and for blocking the resurrection of Christ the Savior

Notice he says “Ateek has FIGURATIVELY blamed Israel.” That word is important. He cannot claim that Ateek actually made such a claim because he didn’t. So he uses the vague and essentially meaningless term “figuratively.”

It is a characteristic tactic of the Frontpagemagazine-CAMPUS Watch-CAMERA crowd to take a truncated version of a statement you DID make and claim that you made a much larger, more damning statement–but which you haven’t made at all. In this case, they’ve INFERRED from Ateek’s statement that the Occupation is a crucifixion that Israelis must be Herod and the Roman crucifiers of Jesus. But there is a difference between inference and explicit reference. Neither Van Zile nor anyone else has ever quoted Ateek as saying that Israelis ARE Herod or Christ-killers. The message simply isn’t there. But that doesn’t stop the Van Ziles of the world in their sacred vocation of protecting Israel from the so-called demonizers like SABEEL.

Here is the clincher-whopper paragraph:

In the context of Christian-Jewish relations, language like this – which has preceded and justified the killing of Jews for nearly two millennia – is the equivalent of a noose hanging from a tree in the Old South. Its use during a time of violence can only serve to justify continued violence against Israeli civilians. Sadly, Ateek’s defenders have said that he is merely using the “language of the cross” to describe Palestinian suffering, but in fact, he is describing Israeli behavior.

So in effect, Ateek has exhorted Arabs to kill Jews because of “figurative” statements which he never actually made. It’s a beautiful sort of twisted, fantastical logic like something out of Goebbels, 1984 or Alice in Wonderland (take your pick). There is no ‘noose.’ There is no ‘tree.’ There is no ‘Old South.’ There is no ‘Christ-killer’ in SABEEL’s writings. There is only the fevered imagination of a poor sot who thinks he’s doing the Lord’s work when he’s really doing the devil’s.

There is a small problem with this method. If in your zeal to do right by Israel you do violence to truth and fact you have done Israel no service at all. In fact, you’ve harmed not only your own reputation, but Israel’s. Not to mention the harm you do to worthy individuals like Tutu and Ateek who, while controversial, have done nothing to warrant the smears mounted against them.

Thanks to reader Rick Charnes of the Boston Tikkun Community for alerting me to this story.