A presentation by Colin Chapman Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide Seminar 9 October, 2018
Introduction
Let me begin with a one-sentence answer: it’s extremely difficult, if not impossible to separate religion and politics in the Middle East today; and the future is bleak unless we can find ways of separating religion and politics and allowing religion to support an international order that is based on the rule of law.
This presentation is very much a ‘big picture’ exercise, an attempt to put some of the pieces of the jig-saw puzzle together. As a Christian who is interested in the role of religion and the interaction of religion with politics, I’m trying to make sense of the history that is being played out before us in the Middle East at the present time.
I probably need to explain my credentials. I’m not a historian or a political scientist. I happen to have worked with a mission agency, the Church Mission Society (CMS), in the Middle East for 18 years and have been engaged in theological education of different kinds both there and in the UK, specialising in recent years in Islamic studies. Continue reading →
A presentation given at the Palestine Center in association with the Jerusalem Fund, in Washington DC, last week on the historical roots, theological basis and political agenda of Christian Zionism. The presentation was drawn from the following three summaries of my PhD thesis on Christian Zionism.
‘This is the story of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula since its sweeping victory over the combined forces of its Jordanian, Syrian and Egyptian neighbours in the Six Day War of 1967… The story that follows is about the politics and practice of the Israeli occupation …’
This summary of the main themes – with extended quotations – answers questions like these:
– Is Israel justified in arguing that it is not an ‘occupation’?
– How has Israel managed the occupation? What has it meant in practice for ordinary people?
– Why did Israel withdraw from Sinai (after Camp David 1999) and from Gaza (2005), but not from the West Bank or the Golan Heights?
– Is there any hope of the occupation coming to an end? Continue reading →
I have a dream. I have a dream. “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
It was August 1963. At the height of the civil rights protests in the USA. Dr Martin Luther King gave a speech in Washington. A powerful speech against hatred, against racism, against segregation, for justice, for equality, for integration. A speech that has inspired millions of people all over the world. To dream of a different future. And not just to dream. But to strive to make that future a reality.
Imagine if Martin Luther King had been a Palestinian. Imagine he was speaking here this afternoon. What would Dr King say? I believe his speech would be very similar. Let me quote a few sentences from his speech in 1963. Notice how prophetic it is today. I have simply substituted the word Palestinian for Negro. Continue reading →
Ten years ago, in September 2008, an anonymous ‘Mordechai Maverick’ sent a defamatory message about me to everyone in our church Facebook group. The message drew attention to a new but anonymous blog called Seismic Shock (intended apparently to sound like my name), which described me as a “dangerous anti- Semite” and promised to publish articles to expose me. The anonymous author(s) then began to write articles about me on a weekly basis, sometimes daily. These were subsequently re-posted on other websites such as Rosh Pina Projectand Harry’s Place. In a one year period September 2008-to July 2009 well over one hundred articles about me were published on the Seismic Shockwebsite.
Surrey police took an interest and provided me and my family with additional security. On 29th November 2009, I received a report from West Yorkshire Police to advise that they had identified and visited an individual and asked him to desist writing defamatory material about me and remove from his website material of that nature. I was asked to contact them if I became aware of further articles by the same individual “causing you harassment”. Despite the fact that at the time I did not know the name of the author, he subsequently went public and then accused me of using the police to suppress free speech on the internet. Continue reading →
An interview with Roshan Muhammed Salih for Press TV on the weaponisation of antisemitism together with Jonathan Rosenhead, Emeritus Professor of Operational Research at the London School of Economics.
How are anti-Semitism accusations being misused by the Israeli lobby?
The Israel Lobby has an impossible task defending the illegal occupation and colonisation of Palestine. Many liken the policies of Israel to a form of apartheid. The denial of Palestinian human rights and breaches of international law are flagrant and systemic. One way to deflect attention and silence criticism, is by seeking international acceptance of a broader definition of antisemitism that conflates antisemitism with anti-Zionism.
Antisemitism is generally understood to be “hostility to, prejudice, or discrimination against Jews.” It is a form of racism and should be repudiated unequivocally. However, Zionists insist Israel is a Jewish state and therefore claim criticism of Israel is synonymous with criticism of Jews and therefore is a form of antisemitism.
Identifying Israel as a Jewish state is problematic not just for its two million Palestinian citizens but also the further three million living under military rule in the Palestinian territories.
Antony Lerman traces the historical development of the ‘new antisemitism’ and draws out how the new definition differs from traditional descriptions.
“In a word, classical anti-Semitism is the discrimination against, denial of, or assault upon the rights of Jews to live as equal members of whatever society they inhabit. The new anti-Semitism involves the discrimination against, denial of, or assault upon the right of the Jewish people to live as an equal member of the family of nations, with Israel as the targeted ‘collective Jew among the nations’.”[1]
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition, recently accepted by the British government, reads:
“Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”[2]
The IHRA acknowledge “criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.” So what is wrong with equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism? Ben White cites several anti-Zionist Jewish campaigners:
“For Rebecca Vilkomerson, Executive Director of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), a group with more than 200,000 online members and 60 chapters across the US, “equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism obscures the long history of Jewish anti-Zionism and diasporism.” According to the UK-based group Jews for Justice for Palestinians, fusing “Jewishness/Israel/Zionism” enables antisemitism to become “a weapon for imposing conformity on dissidents within the Jewish community.”
Chicago-based Rabbi Brant Rosen has described how “growing numbers of Jews” identify as anti-Zionists for “legitimate ideological reasons”, motivated “by values of equality and human rights for all human beings.” His words chime with those of a former President of Edinburgh University’s Jewish Society, who recently wrote of “the growing frustration felt by many millennial Jews about the default positioning that support for Israel receives amongst Jewish civil society organisations.”
But what about the claim that, since Zionism is simply Jewish self-determination, anti-Zionism is anti-Jewish bigotry? This is also misguided; put simply, “self-determination does not equate to statehood.” As legal scholar Michael Kearney has explained, self-determination is “less understood these days as a right to one’s own exclusive state, and more as a right to non-discrimination and to democratic participation in society.”
Israel’s supporters, however, are deliberately conflating terms such as ‘homeland’, ‘home’, ‘state’, and ‘self-determination’. The concept of a Jewish homeland is one thing; the creation and maintenance of a ‘Jewish state’, in Palestine, at the expense of its non-Jewish inhabitants, is another. The right to self-determination is never a right to colonisation, whoever is doing it.
Finally, to maintain that anti-Zionism is antisemitism is to deny the historical and contemporary reality of the Palestinians’ experience, and to dehumanise them as a people. For the Palestinians, Zionism has meant violent displacement, colonisation, and discrimination – are they ‘antisemitic’ for refusing to cheer their own dispossession? By extension, as orthodox Jewish studies and philosophy professor Charles H. Manekinput it recently, labelling Palestine solidarity activists as antisemitic is to imply that “the Palestinians have little justified claim to sympathy.”[3]
Frances Webber of the Institute for Race Relations raises another concern.
“This conflation of anti-Israelism with anti-Semitism has a history … but what particularly concerns us here is the way that the definition of anti-Semitism is moving from deed to thought, from the objective to the subjective, from action to attitude.
The IRR has always maintained that it was important to distinguish between prejudices – the subjective – and the acting out of those prejudices – the objective – in discriminatory acts, physical attacks, government edicts etc. Penalising people for racist feelings or attitudes leads to thought-policing, whereas racist acts are measurable and therefore prosecutable before the law if needs be. And there are specific laws relating to incitement to race hatred, the committing of racially-motivated crimes, discrimination in provision of goods and services whether direct or indirect. But, recently, emanating in part from cultural/identity studies in academia, a kind of victimology, a subjectivism is creeping into policy. Anything that is said or might be said that upsets people, gives hurt, merely makes them uncomfortable, is becoming equated with outright discrimination and liable for a prohibitive ban.”[4]
Webber emphasizes that causing office is not synonymous with racism.
“The conceptual flaw underlying Pickles’ definition is to equate racism with anything that gives offence. For while racism is offensive, not everything which gives offence is per se racist. Objections to cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed as a terrorist or paedophile are made not on grounds of their offensiveness – although they undoubtedly are – but on the grounds of the use of crude racist images to depict a religious minority as quintessentially evil. Although it might cause offence to some, it is no more inherently racist to attack Israel’s policies than it is to demand that ‘Rhodes must fall’ or to denounce US or British imperialism or these states’ complicity in torture. So Pickles’ definition not only appears to make an exception of Israel but also to close down on freedom of speech and of expression when it comes to defining what it is permissible to say about a particular country.”[5]
What then is wrong with the new definition of antisemitism?
“Critics of the concept argue that it conflates anti-Zionism with antisemitism, defines legitimate criticism of Israel too narrowly and demonization too broadly, trivializes the meaning of antisemitism, and exploits antisemitism in order to silence political debate.”[6]
Antony Lerman goes further, arguing that perversely, the new definition actually provokes antisemitism.
“The de-coupling of the understanding of antisemitism from traditional antisemitic tropes, which thereby made criticism of Israel in and of itself antisemitic, necessarily made the opposite – support for Israel – into a touchstone for expressing sympathy with Jews. This opened the door to the phenomenon of Jewish support for far right, anti-Islam, anti-immigrant parties keen to whitewash their pasts and sanitise their anti-Muslim prejudice by expressing support for Israel and seeing the country and its Jews as the front line against Islam’s ‘incursion into Europe’. It is not surprising, therefore, that acceptance of the ‘new antisemitism’ theory has contributed to the exacerbation of tensions between Muslims and Jews in the UK (and elsewhere in Europe). There is, however, mutual pre-existing misunderstanding and mistrust, while negative images of Jews unrelated to the Israel-Palestine conflict are common among some Muslims.”[7]
The children’s story of Chicken Little who thought the sky was falling in when a leaf fell on his head is pertinent. The danger is that by broadening or diluting the definition of antisemitism, people could easily become complacent and immune to genuine antisemitism and when it rears its ugly head not resist it. Brian Klug argues,
“When anti-Semitism is everywhere, it is nowhere. And when every anti-Zionist is an anti-Semite, we no longer know how to recognize the real thing—the concept of anti-Semitism loses its significance.”[8]
Antony Lerman adds,
“Given the misery and murder that antisemitism has caused over the centuries,” … “one might expect pro-Israel groups to be more circumspect before using it indiscriminately as a political tool.” … “not everything that offends Jewish sensibilities is antisemitism”, and by labelling BDS as antisemitic, Israel advocates “are draining the word of any meaning.”[9]
Ben White concludes,
“This politicised redefining of antisemitism should worry us all: it dehumanises Palestinians and delegitimises solidarity, imperils the fight against real antisemitism, and constitutes a much broader attackon our democracy and political freedoms.”[10]
What is the agenda behind these accusations (against the Labour Party)?
In the UK, Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party are repeatedly being accused of antisemitism. Zionists know that a Labour government under Corbyn will introduce major changes to British foreign policy. Jeremy Corbyn would recognise the state of Palestine on the 1967 borders, (like most of the rest of the world – 136 out of 193 countries in 2015), and likely introduce sanctions against Israel and punish international companies profiting from the occupation.
Ben White cites Richard Kuper, spokesperson of Jews for Justice for Palestinians (JfJfP) as saying,
“there is clearly also a coordinated, willed and malign campaign to exaggerate the nature and extent of antisemitism as a stick to beat the Labour party”[11]
Ben White observes,
“The Labour Party has more than 400 MPs and peers at Westminster, in addition to almost 7,000 local government officials and some 390,000 members. The antisemitism ‘crisis’ has involved half a dozen individuals, most of whom have either never held, or no longer hold elected office. Corbyn himself has repeatedly condemned antisemitism since becoming leader, while according to Party General Secretary Iain McNicol, everyone reported for antisemitism has been suspended or excluded.”[12]
Ironically, a March 2018 You Gov survey found that Conservative supporters were more likely to hold racist views than Labour supporters and that evidence of antisemitism has declined in the Labour party since Jeremy Corbyn was elected as leader.[13]
How can pro-Palestinians counter these attacks?
Repudiate all forms of racism including antisemitism, unequivocally.
Repudiate the small minority of antisemites using the Palestinian cause for their own agenda.
Cooperate with Jewish organisations committed to both repudiating antisemitism and Zionism. Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP). Jews for Justice for Palestinians (JFJFP). The Israeli Committee Against House demolitions (ICAHD). Natura Karta. Women in Black.
Remain determined to hold Israel accountable to international law for its racist policies toward Palestinians.
Continue to draw parallels between Zionist settler colonialism with the way native Americans were treated in the USA, Blacks in South Africa, the Aborigines in Australia, etc.
Are these attacks a sign of the success of the pro-Palestine lobby?
Yes. The attempt to broaden the definition of antisemitism is paralleled by the attempt to criminalise the BDS movement. This is because non-violent, peaceful activism poses the greatest threat to the Zionist cause.
“What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8)
This short article, its title and questions arose from an interview with Roshan Mohammed Salih and Jonathan Rosenhead for Press TV’s ‘The Sun Will Rise’.
Five Strategies used by the Israel Lobby to silence critics. Recorded for Press TV.
1. Infiltration
Get alongside your opponent and try and turn them, buy them, befriend them, bring them on-side. If that doesn’t work, move to level 2.
2. Intimidation
Don’t like what they are saying or writing? Then bombard them with emails, letters and phone calls. Put them on the defensive. Intimidate them with accusations of anti-semitism, holocaust denial, etc. If that doesn’t work, move to level 3. Continue reading →
Photos of yesterday’s conference organised by King’s College, London & Balfour Project: 1st May 2018.
Speakers included Sir Vincent Fean (former British Counsel-General, Jerusalem), Alon Liel (former Director-General, Israeli Foreign Ministry), Ghada Karmi (Palestinian doctor, writer, Research Fellow, Exeter University), Peter Shambrook (British historian specialising in the Middle East), Leila Sansour (Palestinian film maker based in Bethlehem) and Menachem Klein Department of Political Science, Bar-Ilan University, Israel and Visiting Professor, Kings College Middle East Studies Department). Continue reading →
President Donald Trump’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, destroyed in the stroke of the pen any lingering illusions of a shared city, the two state solution or an independent sovereign Palestine. Jewish and Christian Zionists regard Jerusalem as the exclusive, undivided and eternal capital of the Jewish state, justifying the annexation, segregation and ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
Following the Arab-Israeli war of 1967 and the capture of Jerusalem, in June 1971, a conference took place in Jerusalem of over 1,200 evangelical leaders from 32 different countries. Welcomed by David Ben Gurion, the conference was billed as “the first conference of its kind since A.D. 59”. The capture of Jerusalem was portrayed as “confirmation that Jews and Israel still had a role to play in God’s ordering of history” and that the return of Jesus was imminent.[1]
This is a book which ought to be read widely as we remember in June 2017 the 50th anniversary of the Six Day War of 1967. If we wonder why Israel shows no sign of being willing to end its occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Avi Raz, an Israeli Jewish journalist and historian, has collected convincing evidence from the period of twenty-one months between June 1967 and February 1969 to show that the vast majority of Israeli leaders never had any intention of withdrawing from the occupied territories.
These are the main conclusions of the book together with quotations taken mainly from the Introduction and Conclusion:
A presentation by Colin Chapman
