Bishop Riah Hanna Abu El-Assal - another Anglican anti-Semite

Now for some background to the other Anglican "luminary" from Jerusalem, follow the link to this posting on "Stand Firm" by Greg Griffith, Thursday, July 27, 2006:

This man [Bishop Riah Hanna Abu El-Assal, the Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem] is a disgrace. Lots of hand-wringing about Palestinian angels and choirboys, but not a word about the thousands of innocent Israelis killed over the years in pizzerias and bus stops by terrorists with car bombs, or with semtex belts strapped to their bodies. Rowan Williams should denounce this statement, but I won't hold my breath....

Follow the link to the full posting and note the comments from US Anglicans...We need some Australian Anglicans to also "Stand Firm" against the hijacking of their church for foul purposes....

Hate at the altar

For some more background on the Anglican anti-Semitic movement (recipient of Australian charity via "AngliCORD"), see this from the Boston Globe, by Dexter Van Zile, media analyst at CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, October 25, 2007:

Naim Ateek - Anglican anti-Semite, purveyor of hatred, recipient of Australian Anglican "charity"

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.

Sadly, Old South Church in downtown Boston is playing host to just such a group this weekend - with one slight difference. Instead of displaying a noose during a time of racial tension, 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 [from the Diocese of Jerusalem, recipient of Australian AngliCORD charity], the use of its worship space.

For the past three decades, Sabeel has billed itself as the voice of the beleaguered community of Palestinian Christians in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and Israel. Over the years, Sabeel has been successful in convincing well-meaning, but largely ignorant Christians in the United States and Europe that the Palestinian people are innocent sufferers and the Israeli government their brutal oppressors.

The centerpiece of this effort can be seen in the hostile rhetoric of Ateek. 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. In his 2001 Easter message, Ateek wrote, "The Israeli government crucifixion system is operating daily" and that "Palestine has become the place of the skull." And in February 2001, Ateek compared the Israeli occupation to the stone blocking Christ's tomb.

With these three 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.

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.

Taken to its logical end, language like this suggests that the only solution to Palestinian suffering is Israel's elimination, which Sabeel called for in a 2004 document that stated the organization's "vision for the future" is "one-state for two nations and three religions."

To make matters worse, Ateek has invoked the notion of the wandering, defenseless Jew as a good thing by writing that Jewish statehood contradicts the Jewish call to suffer. This type of language has been regarded as taboo by responsible Christians since the Holocaust, and its reemergence in Ateek's writing is as ominous as a noose hanging from a tree.

This is not peacemaking; it is demonization. Such language might have been tolerable in the Old South, but not today.

Not in Boston's Old South.

Also see this, from "Divestment: The How-To Manual", by David Meir-Levi, FrontPageMagazine.com Monday, February 20, 2006:

...western society is constantly inundated with an endless barrage of anti-Israel diatribe cloaked in the faux mantles of human rights, justice, peace, or support for the Palestinian victims of Israeli aggression. The goal is for the western world eventually to acquiesce to the anti-Israel ideological cornerstone: the demonization of Israel such that Israel is defined as a rogue state, the world’s worst violator of human rights, a state that does not have the right to exist. Thus will the terrorists’ ultimate destruction of Israel be not just justified, but actually welcomed.
They do not want peace. They want Israel destroyed.

...Who or what is the author of this movement?

....there is some very compelling evidence to indicate that at least one of the originators of the divestment movement is the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center, based in Jerusalem and headed by Na’im Ateek. Sabeel was founded by Anglican Canon Naim Ateek in 1989. It espouses Marxist leaning liberation theology in the service to the Palestinian cause.

Sabeel describes itself as “an ecumenical grassroots liberation theology movement among Palestinian Christians”, which “hopes to connect the true meaning of Christian faith with the daily lives of all those who suffer under occupation, violence, discrimination, and human rights violations”. However, according to Brigitte Gabriel, Naim Ateek and other Sabeel acolytes devote themselves to promoting hatred of Jews and Israel.

...Sabeel’s record clearly demonstrates its central goal of delegitimizing and dismantling the State of Israel. Sabeel is active in promoting an extreme anti-Israel agenda in Protestant churches in both North America and Europe . Sabeel’s efforts have promoted the campaign to isolate and delegitimize Israel through the divestment movement, which was originally adopted by the World Council of Churches, the Anglican Church in Britain, the Presbyterian Church, and others. Many of these Church statements are actually paraphrases or even verbatim quotes from Sabeel’s publications. Therefore, it may well be that the divestment campaign, the latest form of political warfare against Israel, can be attributed to the efforts of Na’im Ateek and his staff at Sabeel....

For more, see "The radicals behind the Anglican Church" by SARAH MANDEL in JPost, Feb 26, 2006

Just another day of vilifying Jews

The Anglican Church is still up to its misguided and dangerous "mischief". They are raising money in Australia to support an anti-Semitic arm of the Church, in Jerusalem. Ultimately this Australian money will support terrorism. This fundraising is advertised by the Australian Friends of Palestine Association, which includes very senior Anglican Church officials on its mailing lists.

See this from an article by Paul Davenport, Development Program Manager, AngliCORD (Anglican Church of Melbourne):

As the situation of intimidation and insecurity in the West Bank and Gaza continues, the quality of the work of The Diocese of Jerusalem is all the more remarkable and important....

[The Diocese of Jerusalem has included such "luminaries" as Riah Hanna Abu El-Assal, and Naim Ateek, two virulently anti-Semitic Anglican Arabs:

[1] Riah Hanna Abu El-Assal is a proponent of “replacement theology,” a discredited doctrine that lies behind centuries of Christian anti-Semitism. It teaches that the Christian Church is the replacement for Israel and that the many promises made to Israel in the Bible are fulfilled in the Christian Church, not in Israel. So, the prophecies in Scripture concerning the blessing and restoration of Israel to the Promised Land are "spiritualized" or “allegorized” into promises of God's blessing for the Church. The doctrine insinuates that all God’s promises to the Jews -- including the land of Israel -– were forfeit because the Jews had denied the divinity of Christ.

Riah has 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.’ Speaking at a lecture in the Arab Anglican Episcopalian Centre in Ramallah (Fasl Al-MaQal, Feb 6, 2003) he also supported terrorism by putting the view that suicide “martyrs” receive eternal life: " "Greetings of appreciation to all martyrs that were killed on the Land of Palestine ….Do not consider those that were killed for the sake of God as dead, but alive with their Lord".

[2] Naim Ateek is also a “replacement theologist” whose papers invert history, defame the Jews, justify anti-Semitism (as a ‘logical’ consequence of Israeli policies) and sanitise Arab violence. He was amongst the writers that asserted the alleged ‘similarity’ between Israeli policy and South African apartheid several years ago, and he ‘blessed’ and justified the Arab intifada in 2000.]

...My recent visit to Jerusalem, Nablus, Gaza and Ramallah left me with a confusing mix of contradictory feelings.

... I was deeply saddened to witness the humiliation of these same people as they waited patiently for four hours before being admitted into Gaza at the Eretz checkpoint....

...Earlier in the week, while visiting the parish church in Nablus in the West Bank, we witnessed soldiers retaliating against stone throwing youth with rounds of semi-automatic gunfire. A short time later a 12 year old boy was admitted to St Luke’s Hospital. His X-rays showed shrapnel dangerously close to his spine. As I saw the distress of his parents and extended family, it brought home to me the ripple effect that such an incident must have within the community.

This is a complex situation characterised by violence, poverty and trauma. The Diocese of Jerusalem is looking for new ways to respond ["new ways..." ... I wonder what they might be? - SL]. In turn, AngliCORD is committed to supporting that response both financially, and through solidarity....

Note that AngliCORD is accountable to Archbishop in Council, Diocese of Melbourne and the Diocese of Melbourne Synod, and is accredited by the Federal Government's overseas aid body, the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID), to receive government grants.

AngliCORD Board:

• President: The Most Reverend Dr Philip Freier, Archbishop of Melbourne
• Chair of the Board: The Ven Alison Taylor, Parish Priest St Dunstan's, Camberwell South
• Deputy Chair: Mr Andrew Flint
• Chief Executive Officer: Mr Michael Smitheram

AngliCORD Members:

• The Venerable Philip Newman, Archdeacon of: Christian Unity, Relations with World Religions. Board Chair of Shelford Girls' Grammar.
• The Revd David Boyd, Chaplain St Paul's Anglican Grammar School, Warragul
• Ms Wendy Rose AM, Former Chief Executive Save the Children Fund; Vice President ACFOA
• Ms Tracey Matthews, Workplace Asst & Training. Registrar, Diocese of Canberra Goulburn
• Mr Damien Arnold, Resources Manager, Breast Cancer Australia
• Mr David Woods, Company Secretary for AngliCORD.

Dhimmi — or just dim?

From Melanie Phillips' Diary, in The Spectator (UK), Saturday, 9th February 2008:

... the Archbishop of Canterbury is fighting to save his job by frantically back-tracking and claiming he has been misunderstood. It was all got up by the tabloids… no-one actually read the lecture… people have jumped to the wrong conclusion from a few misleading headlines. Ye gods. What planet is he living on? Everyone heard what the man actually said on the World at One; by now, many have heroically ploughed through his lecture as well. It is the words that he actually uttered that have caused unprecedented numbers to take to their keyboards in outrage. And it is the words that he actually uttered that make the statement on his website attempting to justify himself, written in the third person by an anonymous apparatchik at Lambeth Palace, disingenuous to the point of being seriously misleading.

The statement ...implies that it was only in answering a question that he coyly agreed that the use of sharia was unavoidable. But he was actually promoting this idea himself as a desirable development. .... In his lecture, he said in terms that he was talking about the state recognising sharia in certain circumstances as a ‘supplementary jurisdiction’. It was a central argument of this lecture that the state, which already recognised some provisions of sharia (alas, too true) should recognise other provisions such as family law, and that individuals should be able to choose which system they wanted, in

"…a scheme in which individuals retain the liberty to choose the jurisdiction under which they will seek to resolve certain carefully specified matters, so that ‘power-holders are forced to compete for the loyalty of their shared constituents’. This may include aspects of marital law, the regulation of financial transactions and authorised structures of mediation and conflict resolution ...."

That means two systems existing side by side with equal status. In other words, parallel systems.

....and the attitude of those British Muslims who want to live under sharia rather than English law...Dr Williams himself described as leaving them

"systematically faced with the stark alternatives of cultural loyalty or state loyalty…"

This is actually a shattering thing to say about Britain’s Muslim community. For it says that their loyalty to their culture is in conflict with their loyalty to the UK — a conflict experienced by no other minority in the UK, which Dr Williams appears not to grasp. His whole lecture was devoted to attempting to resolve that conflict — which he did by suggesting, in effect, that if Muslims can’t be British under existing law, then Britain will have to become at least a little bit Muslim, in order to enable what he called in terms

"a competition for loyalty"

with Muslims given the ability to choose between English and Islamic law. This shocking suggestion is the undeniable meaning of his words, delivered at such great length. Can it really be the case that no-one at Lambeth Palace actually understands what these words mean? Or are they really so arrogant that they thought no-one else would understand?

....Next, the statement actually repeated the significant error Dr Williams made about Jewish law and the relationship between British Jews and the state:

"At the end of the lecture the Archbishop referred to a suggestion by a Jewish jurist that there might be room for 'overlapping jurisdictions' in which ‘individuals might choose in certain limited areas whether to seek justice under one system or another’. This is what currently happens both within the Jewish arrangements and increasingly in current alternative dispute resolution and mediation practice."

This is completely untrue....there are no ‘overlapping jurisdictions’ between English and Jewish law, and Jewish law is not a ‘supplementary jurisdiction’ in the UK. A jurisdiction is a body of legal authority which has binding force upon those to whom it is applied. Jewish religious law in the UK has no legal authority over British Jews and no such binding force. Jews most certainly do not choose ‘whether to seek justice in one system or another’ except where their participation in Beth Din religious tribunals is entirely voluntary on the part of all concerned, such as in the informal arbitration of disputes. For the enforcement of justice, they must seek remedies from English law, just as they must be married or divorced under English law — Jewish marriage and divorce rituals having no official standing — for such status to be recognised by the state.

It is a Jewish religious requirement for Jews to live under the law of the land in which they reside. It is simply astounding that Lambeth Palace continues to perpetuate a false impression about this. Do they really know nothing about Judaism? Why do they insist upon dragging the Jews into this?

The statement also omits any reference to the most astonishing thing of all that the Archbishop said: that there should not be one law for all. In the lecture he said he wanted to end our

"unqualified secular legal monopoly;"

he wanted the rule of law to be detached from

"any one form of corporate belonging or any particular history"

— ie, to be detached from one thousand years of British history, Christian ethics, the English common law and western civilisation; because, as he said so jaw-droppingly in his radio interview:

"An approach to law which simply said - there's one law for everybody - I think that's a bit of a danger."

Dr Williams says he has been misunderstood. Tellingly, his website statement makes no defence at all of this devastating renunciation of the doctrine of equality before the law. This omission suggests that at least someone at Lambeth Palace understands what Dr Williams actually said only too well.

The lecture and radio interview were bad enough, heaven knows. But this statement on his website raises yet further concerns. How can the Archbishop of Canterbury put out such a seriously misleading and, in parts, demonstrably false statement? It moves this affair on from questions about judgment — which are serious enough — to questions about integrity.

Either Dr Williams really does not understand what he himself said — in which case he is a fool; or he understands exactly what he said and is trying to pretend that he didn’t say it — in which case he is a knave.

Either way, he has done great harm to his church and is a danger to his country ...He should stand down and the courageous and sharp Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali — a man whose life is now in danger for having spoken the truth about Islam in a Britain whose religious and cultural identity he actually defends, but about whom Dr Williams has said not one word in support — should take his place.

Now that really would be a statement in defence of Britain and western civilisation.