Here is Shane Claiborne, who will speak at the Christ at the Checkpoint 2012 conference:
Amongst its allies, CATC counts Dr Jim West, who admires the Nazi theologian Kittel. Kittel discussed extermination of the Jews, as a possible answer to the “Jewish question”.
Mitri Raheb – pushed racist theology at CATC 2010
The Stonegate Institute reports:
Since 1992, the German concern Media Control has awarded an annual prize, known as “Deutscher Medienpreis.” According to the company website, it is given “to a person who had outstanding importance in the media during the past year.” Remarkably, the list of yearly awardees has mostly lived up to that ambitious description, including many illustrious and deserving personalities. Until this year, that is.
Four awardees were named for the 2011 prize in a press announcement on January 13, 2012. While three seem to be meritorious enough, the fourth is a Palestinian pastor who has devoted all his theological energies to delegitimizing the State of Israel. No, he does not just oppose “the occupation.” He maintains that Israel is a foreign European body that lacks his own DNA connection to the people of the Bible. Moreover, Media Control has lined up a former President of Germany, Prof. Roman Herzog, to come and praise him.
Part of the problem may be that for this year, the twentieth anniversary of the prize, Media Control decided to abandon its previous winning formula. According to that press announcement: “For the jubilee of the Media Prize, this tradition is being broken in order to honor personalities who are quiet peacemakers and whose activity takes place without great media attention.” In other words, people whom we do not know much about and who may not have done anything of note recently.
Lutheran Pastor Mitri Raheb of Bethlehem, however, is by no means an unknown character in Germany. He has published books there and he has given countless speeches in churches and church-related institutions. On February 19 next, he is scheduled to preach in the Berliner Dom, the principal Protestant church in Berlin, and to deliver a keynote lecture in the afternoon at another major church, the French Dom. Very handy for the award ceremony of the Media Prize on February 24.
To give a taste of his theology, we shall give an extract from a speech that he held in Bethlehem in March 2010. For nearly two years, anyone in the world with a computer, including the people of Media Control, has been able to read this speech and even to listen to it.
Said Mitri Raheb: “Actually, Israel represents Rome of the Bible, not the people of the land. And this is not only because I’m a Palestinian. I’m sure if we were to do a DNA test between David, who was a Bethlehemite, and Jesus, born in Bethlehem, and Mitri, born just across the street from where Jesus was born, I’m sure the DNA will show that there is a trace. While, if you put King David, Jesus and Netanyahu, you will get nothing, because Netanyahu comes from an East European tribe who converted to Judaism in the Middle Ages.”
And he continued in this vein. I have written about Raheb’s speech in another article, which is available in German. The article was even published in Germany last December by the official “Circle of Friends” in Baden that promotes good relations between German Protestants and the Jewish people (Freundeskreis Kirche und Israel in Baden e.V.). Media Control and its prize-awarding jury should have known about this major aspect of Raheb. Yet his citation for the prize, according to the press announcement, is for being a “quiet peacemaker” who “stands for understanding between Christian, Muslims and Jews” and is “the alternative to violence and radicalization.”
Let us paraphrase this citation in words that do not disguise the reality. Raheb is a noisy denier of the very legitimacy of the State of Israel, which he seeks to undermine not by physical violence but by a radical theology that awakes enthusiasm among Christians, Muslims and even a handful of Jews who long to see Israel vanish from the map.
Whereas the Nazis spoke of “race” and “blood,” Raheb is modern enough to speak of “DNA,” but what is the difference? It is not just that for the Nazis Jews did not belong in Germany because their blood was non-Aryan, whereas for Raheb they do not belong anywhere near him because he thinks their DNA is European. The difference is also that Prof. Roman Herzog represents the new Germany that arose from the ruins of Nazism, yet he is slated to come along on February 24 and praise such a person. A former German president will be praising the man who delegitimizes an elected prime minister for having the wrong DNA.
Prof. Herzog has been placed in an embarrassing position by the decision of Media Control’s jury. Since he is doubtless asked to deliver such speeches on many occasions, one cannot expect him personally to research everyone he is supposed to talk about. But the embarrassment goes further. He is also the patron of the Roman Herzog Institute in Munich, created by friends who cherish his ideals. Praise of DNA-theologian Raheb will not bring much honor to that institute nor, for that matter, to Media Control itself.
German-speaking Christians have already begun writing to Prof. Herzog to warn him about what he has got into. We await the response of international Jewish organizations.
Read Michael Curtis in the American Thinker:
This mainstream clerical criticism, at its worst animosity, regarding Israel has become very visible at the moment because of the upcoming Christ at the Checkpoint (CAC) Conference organized by the Biblical College, Bethlehem (West Bank), in partnership with the Holy Land Trust and the World Council of Churches to be held this March. [...]
The thrust of these conferences was clear from the outset. At the first in 2010, Rev. Stephen Sizer, vicar of Christ Church, Virginia Water, Surrey, England, who is to be the main organizer of the 2012 CAC conference, in one of his frequent denunciations of Israel, supported the call of the journalist Helen Thomas for Jews to “get the hell out of Palestine.” The Lutheran priest, Mitri Raheb, pastor of the Evangelical Christian Church in Bethlehem, acknowledged that a DNA test would show the mutual origin of King David and Jesus, but there was no link with Benjamin Netanyahu, who came from Eastern Europe, not Palestine. The British Anglican Rev. Colin Chapman asserted that because Muhammad had “bad experiences” with the Jews of Medina, it must seem to Palestinian Muslims as if the Jews of the modern period were simply repeating the hostile behavior of Jews towards the Prophet many centuries earlier.
At the 2011 CAC conference Naim Ateek, former Palestinian head of the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem, compared the fate of Jesus on the cross to that of present-day Palestinians. He saw Palestine as one huge Golgotha in which the Israeli government crucifixion system was operating daily. Elsewhere, he argued, with curious theology, that “the original sin is the work of the violence of the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.” In his book Justice, and Only Justice, Ateek, calling for a liberation theology, contended that the Bible is a problem for Palestinian Christians because of its use in the justification of Zionism.
The March 2012 CAC conference is expected to attract a considerable number of U.S. theologians, including well-known individuals such as Samuel Rodriguez, head of the U.S. National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference; Tony Campolo, a sociologist and pastor who was for a time a spiritual adviser to Bill Clinton and founder of the Evangelical Association for Promotion of Education; and the South Korean pastor Sang-Bok David Kim, head of the World Evangelical Alliance, the parent group of the National Association of Evangelicals, and also head of the Asian Evangelical Alliance.
Here is Messianic theologian Richard Harvey, in an article for Jews for Jesus from July 1988, about Zionism:
The Arab minority in Israel lives in better economic conditions than in many neighboring Arab states, and is certainly treated far more humanely than a Jew would be in an Arab land. Yet they suffer a degree of discrimination in political, economic and social life.
Here is antizionist theologian Stephen Sizer, writing about Harvey’s words for The Churchman and for Global Connections:
The Peace Plan brokered by Clinton and Barak would have given the Israeli’s a further 30% of the West Bank leaving the Palestinians isolated ‘Palestans’, that is isolated pockets of land surrounded by barbed wire, electric fences, mines and Jewish settlements. Christian Zionists cannot understand why Palestinians are not grateful. Richard Harvey, for example, points out that,
“The Arab minority in Israel lives in better economic conditions than in many neighboring Arab states, and is certainly treated far more humanely than a Jew would be in an Arab land.”
Christian Zionists therefore invariably oppose the dismantling of the Jewish settlements in the Palestinian Territories.
A few things to note here:
The IFCJ Stand For Israel blog writes:
Palestinians have a new target for their hateful anti-Israel, historic-revisionist rhetoric: evangelical Christians. The worst part – some Christians are buying it [...]
Dr Jim West
Here is a Twitter exchange between myself and Dr. Jim West, a Baptist pastor, theologian and linguist who has written some commentaries and books about the Bible.
He says:
it’s
#ff !!!! here are my recommendations :@LaraSpencer ,@bibledex ,@ChristAtCheckpt ,@TearsaSmith , and@lucky13wxman
Me:
why are u recommending
@ChristAtCheckpt conference that tolerates antisemitism and racism?
Dr West:
it is neither anti semitic or racist.
Me:
It is both racist & antisemitic, see here:seismicshock.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/antise…
Dr West:
or more likely- your source is anti-palestinian and racist
Me:
I wrote it – Im happily pro-Palestinian, without saying things like “Jews r behaving like they did to Mohamed”, as last conference
The exchange continues for a few more tweets, along these lines.
Now Dr West writes:
I got a bit of ‘hate mail’ the other day because I was supporting (in a previous post) the Christ at the Checkpoint project (which my emailer described as a racist and anti-semitic project). When I see honest efforts for peace demonized by Christian Zionists I’m naturally motivated to promote them even more. [...] If you can attend the Conference, you really should go. Here’s what the Conference is REALLY about (in case you too have had the Christian Zionists stoop to deception) [...]
Here’s my reply to Dr West:
Hi Jim.
Could you explain how you received hate mail, as opposed to a comment firmly disagreeing with you?
http://seismicshock.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/antisemitism-and-christ-at-the-checkpoint-2012.pdf[You say:]
“When I see honest efforts for peace demonized by Christian Zionists I’m naturally motivated to promote them even more.”
I would hope you were motivated by your convictions, not because you feel you are in a holy war with other Christians!
Let’s see if my comment gets published.
What a sorry state of affairs, when you point out anti-Jewish bigotry and racism, and a pastor accuses you of hatred, in return!
UPDATE:
Jim West now writes:
i received hate mail that had nothing to do with your comment. what, you aren’t the only one with feelings on the subject. don’t be paranoid.
My reply:
Jim. You are backtracking.
You say:
“I got a bit of ‘hate mail’ the other day because I was supporting (in a previous post) the Christ at the Checkpoint project (which my emailer described as a racist and anti-semitic project).”
They are the words I used to describe the project. I wrote to you:
“It is both racist & antisemitic, see here:http://seismicshock.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/antisemitism-and-christ-at-the-checkpoint-2012.pdf“
As these were my words, what differentiated the “hate mail” you received, from my message?
If someone stated they hate you, or said something violent towards you or others, that is different from correctly calling out the Checkpoint conference as racist and antisemitic – which it is.
Here is more regarding Stephen Sizer, one of the organisers of the Christ at the Checkpoint Conference in Bethlehem next year. This is yet more evidence that Messianic Jews should have nothing to do with it or him.
The RichardMillett’s Blog reports one yet another anti-Israel hate-fest that Sizer is happy to associate himself with and speak at.
…I now have to write about yet another sick anti-Israel public meeting in London that took place last Thursday at the Rivercourt Methodist Church, King Street, Hammersmith.
The event was called Jerusalem Under Threat and was held by the West London Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Due to speak were Reverend Stephen Sizer, Arthur Goodman (Jews for Justice for Palestinians), Linda Ramsden (Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions) and Daud Abdullah (Middle East Monitor). Ghada Karmi couldn’t make it but instead we were subjected to a talk by an Anarchist Against the Wall.
…. Stephen Sizer was proficient at marketing his book Christian Zionism: Road-map to Armageddon?, there being a leaflet on every seat. He was quick to tell us that Christians have lived in Jerusalem for 2000 years and in peace with their Christian and Jewish neighbours and that only recently have tensions grown. He said that since 1948 there has been a massive reduction of Christians in the West Bank and Israel. Not surprisingly he blamed Israel for this and referred to “the apartheid wall” as “segregation based on race”.
He quoted passages from the bible that he believes supports a “one state solution”, which was all lapped up in silence by his hypocritical audience who would have yelled derision at someone had that person quoted the many biblical passages that support the Jewish people’s right to Israel, the West Bank, Gaza and Jordan.
He said that church leaders refuse to speak out about Israel’s crimes because of “guilt for the Holocaust and fear of anti-Semitism” and that churches which side with “the occupation” and Zionism have “repudiated Jesus, have repudiated the bible and are an abomination”
Read the rest of the blog post here
At 5:02 Sizer implies that the similarity in the look of the websites of Obama and Netanyahu during their respective election campaigns is somehow a symptom of something more sinister… the secret influence of a Christian Zionist web designer perhaps! However this is very much part of Sizer’s mudslinging style, hoping that throwing enough will allow something to stick. In his book on Christian Zionism he even has a footnote noting the blood libel that it was the Israelis responsible for 9/11.
Christ at the Checkpoint 2012 is hosting many well-known Christian speakers, including several Palestinians and a couple of Messianic Jews. One invite that I find particularly odd, is the invite given to Ben White.
As far as I know, Ben White is not theologically trained. Neither is he a pastor, but simply a one-issue campaigner who occasionally aligns his work with nominally-Christian organisations.
How does Ben White understand the role of Palestinian Christians, in Palestine?
A few years back, Ben White wrote an article in the Al Aqsa journal (edited by Islamist antisemite Ismail Patel, who shares with Ben White an apparent admiration for French Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy), entitled ‘Palestinian-Christian/Muslim Relations: Myths, Propaganda and Realities.’
What is most interesting is that White frames Muslim-Christian co-operation amongst Palestinians by focusing on their response to Zionism, writing:
‘I will look at how Christian and Muslim Palestinians have traditionally lived and worked alongside each other, with a focus on their united front against the Zionist movement.’
White informs readers that:
‘From the Arab Revolt in 1936, to the flourishing of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) in the mid-1960s, Christian Palestinians played a significant role in the resistance to Israel.’
White even quotes the founder of the Islamic Jihad movement as having said:
‘in our movement we accept the participation of our Christian brothers in our struggle without them having to change their religious beliefs.’
White, seeking to break down ‘Zionist propaganda’ that Palestinian Muslims persecute Palestinian Christians, even lays the blame with Israel for inter-Palestinian honour killings, writing:
‘Israel’s territorial fragmentation of Palestine has always threatened to affect Palestinian society on a wider-level and indeed, there are worrying signs that the “sociocide” being practised by Israel has gradually pressurized Palestinian society to breaking point. One such indication is the increase in so-called ‘honour killings’ in recent years, a phenomenon that has sometimes been presented as part of a Muslim-Christian conflict within Palestine.’
The impression gained by these articles is that Ben White defines his form of Christianity as a response to Zionism.
Ben White’s equation appears to go like this:
The legitimate Palestinian credentials of Palestinian Christians can be judged by their participation in ‘resistance’ against Zionism.
We see here how Ben White encouages Palestinian Christians to be authentically Palestinian.by showing ‘resistance’ against Zionism. Resistance which means, in practise, killing Israeli Jews. By contrast, consider what White has to say about Palestinians who pursue peace with Israel, ie. those who have given up on “resistance”.
All of which raises a disturbing question:
If this is how Ben White envisages the role of a Palestinian Christian, then why did the Bethlehem Bible College invite him to Christ at the Checkpoint?
