Arabic news agency Abouna reported in 2010, that Bethlehem governor Abdul Fattah Hamayel was present at the original Christ at the Checkpoint conference.
What do we know about Hamayel? According to Passia.org:
Born in Kufr Malik in 1950; attended Military College in Baghdad; Fateh member and activist, for which he was imprisoned for 17 years in Israeli jails; released in a prisoner exchange in 1985 but re-imprisoned in 1990 and deported to Jordan in 1992; has published Lullabies Behind Bars, a collection of Arabic poetry written while in prison; was allowed to return to Palestine in 1994; served as Fateh Sec.-Gen. in the Ramallah district; was elected PLC member (Fateh) for the Ramallah constituency in the Jan. 1996 elections; member of the PLC Interior and the Budget and Financial Affairs Committees; became a Minister of State without portfolio in the cabinet of PM Mahmoud Abbas on 30 April 2003 (until Oct. 2003).
Richard Harvey, a key Messianic Jewish participant in Christ at the Checkpoint 2012, has told the print edition of Israel Today:
My participation doesn’t mean that I agree with all the aims of the conference or the views of the conference organizers. In fact, as I will be saying in my paper, I believe in God’s continuing election of the Jewish people, which includes the Land promises, and oppose all forms of anti-Judaism, anti-Semitism and supersessionism . I am going to meet my Arab brothers and sisters in Christ to talk, listen and pray with them, to seek to model the reconciliation between enemies and the unity that we have in the Gospel.
When the CATC papers are made public following the conference, it will be very straightforward to assess the extent, to which Richard Harvey does assert his opposition to “all forms of anti-Judaism, anti-Semitism and supersessionism.”
It will also be straightforward to see how clear his challenge is, to the Checkpoint 2012 organisers and participants who are responsible for pushing theological antisemitism.
Of course, there are many forms of antisemitism to oppose at Christ at the Checkpoint 2012.
There is Shane Claiborne, who thinks “the cross lost” when Bonhoeffer tried to kill Hitler. CATC 2012 awarded its blogging prize to Keith Giles, who compares Israel with Pharisees who just persecute Christians. CATC 2012 allies with Dr Jim West, who admires Nazi theologian Kittel.
CATC is being organised by Alex Awad, who has previously shared a platform with terrorist reps and a Holocaust denier, and Rev Stephen Sizer, whose writings have recently been scrutinised and critiqued for anti-Jewish racism by Rev Nick Howard in the British magazine Standpoint.
Richard Harvey will have to share a platform with Ben White, who has previously stated:
I do not consider myself an anti-Semite, yet I can also understand why some are.
It seems to me that Richard Harvey has given himself an impossible task – not least because Checkpoint 2012 organiser Sizer appears to see Richard Harvey as a heretic due to his Zionism.
So it is difficult to see how Dr Harvey can oppose “all forms of anti-Semitism” at Checkpoint 2012, without tackling the antisemitism of Christ at the Checkpointitself.
“With tears and laughter, Shane Claiborne unveils the tragic messes we’ve made of our world and the tangible hope that another world is possible.”
Claiborne is scheduled to speak at the Christ at the Checkpoint 2012 conference, which Stephen Sizer is organising, and where Ben White is also speaking. The conference will take place next month (March 5-9, 2012).
Here is Claiborne speaking about theology and war. Watch from 02:13, when Claiborne begins speaking about German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s role in the attempt to assassinate Hitler:
“I think even Bonhoeffer was wrong. There’s an interview with Hitler’s secretary in a movie called Blind Spot, and she tells about when the assassination attempt failed, and Hitler was very interestingly protected from the bomb, he was convinced at that point, more than ever before, that God was protecting him and his mission, and he went forward with renewed vigilence like ever before. So I would say on the day that Bonhoeffer did that, the cross lost, and that violence just perpetuated.”
According to Claiborne, when Bonhoeffer tried to assassinate Hitler “the cross lost”.
For many Christians, the cross cannot lose, because there Jesus finally defeated death on the cross. Christ’s sacrifice was the once-and-for-all victory over sin.
But surely, if the cross could lose, it would have “lost” when Hitler began to exterminate Jews and Gypsies, and many other innocent people. If Claiborne is correct, then the cross was winning throughout Hitler’s reign, until someone tried to kill Hitler, when the cross “lost”.
This, combined was Claiborne’s language about Hitler being “very interestingly protected” from the attempt on his life, appears to be very disturbing theology. Claiborne later denounces Hitler’s genocide of Jews as “really really terrible theology” and a “skewed theology” – however, he does not claim that “the cross lost” when Hitler killed Jews, in the way that he claims “the cross lost” when Bonhoeffer tried to put an end to Hitler.
Recently, Christ at the Checkpoint 2012 has been courting the support of Dr. Jim West, an American theologian who admires the Nazi theologian Kittel.
There are many other reasons to be concerned about antisemitism at Christ at the Checkpoint 2012.
Also attending this conference, are American megachurch pastor Joel Hunter, the President of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference Samuel Rodriguez, popular US preacher (and former “spiritual adviser” to Bill Clinton) Tony Campolo, and President of the World Evangelical Alliance, Sang-Bok David Kim.
The conference recently awarded its blogging prize to a man named Keith Giles, who has previously stated:
Finally, I would like to ask what the fundamental difference is between today’s secular Jewish nation of Israel and the Pharisees of Jesus’ day?Both reject Christ as the Messiah and persecute Christians in Palestine. Should we support a government, any government, who persecutes our brothers and sisters in Christ?
At the last Christ at the Checkpoint conference in 2010, Lutheran pastor Mitri Raheb argued in a speech that Jews are not native to Palestine:
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.
Christ at the Checkpoint 2012 is doing what it can to bring antisemitic theology back into the lifeblood of mainstream Christian theology.
In October 2011, RPP broke the story of Mitri Raheb’s racist theory about Jewish blood, espoused during a paper which he delivered at Christ at the Checkpoint. Since then, our research was highlighted by the Hudson Institute and the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
The state of Israel has now seen fit to comment on Pastor Raheb’s conduct.
BERLIN – Israeli Embassy representatives expressed dismay with the decision of a German media NGO and former German president Roman Herzog to honor the Bethlehem- based Rev. Mitri Raheb, because of what they term his efforts to delegitimize the Jewish state’s existence.
Israeli diplomatic sources in Berlin told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday that “Raheb is connected to a document – ‘Cairo Palestine’ – that defines Israel as an Apartheid state and calls for a boycott of Israel. It is an extremist and racist document which does not contribute to reconciliation and peace between the Palestinians and Israelis. We regret that one of its authors is receiving acknowledgment in Germany.”
Last week, the Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor and the Simon Wiesenthal Center sharply criticized The Media Control, the German NGO responsible for the award, and Herzog’s decision to deliver a keynote speech in Raheb’s honor in late February.
According to the Wiesenthal Center, “in speeches given to various religious symposia and church summits (including the infamous 2004 US Presbyterian assembly that approved a boycott and divestment campaign against Israel), Raheb promoted a ‘Palestinian theology’ that purports that Jews are not the Chosen People and therefore have no right to the Holy Land.”
German-Israeli friendship groups urged Herzog, who served as president of Germany from 1994-1999, to reconsider his participation at the event honoring Raheb. In an early February letter from the German-Israeli friendship society (or DIG) in Freiburg, its representative Andrea Lauser noted that Herzog’s life motto was “Truth and Clarity,” and expressed hope “that you follow this motto in connection with Dr. Raheb.”
DIG Freiburg said that Raheb had made “racist statements about Israel and Jews” and that his anti-Israel comments contradicted the message of the German media prize for “Alternatives to Violence and Radicalization.” As such, the letter stated, it made no sense that Raheb had been chosen for the award.
The letter also cited Herzog’s speech at the Bergen- Belsen extermination camp in Poland in 1995, in which he said the “history of failure began not after the [Nazis’] seizure of power in 1933,” but long before. He also said in that speech that the “danger of totalitarianism is always present – and not only in Germany, but in the entire world” – a statement that DIG said showed Raheb’s views represented a fascist outlook.
The Rhein-Neckar/Mannheim DIG appears to be the first group to have called for Herzog to pull the plug on his participation because of Raheb’s stance on Israel. In a late January letter to the former president, the group described Raheb as “a prominent Palestinian Christian who delegitimizes the Jewish people and fights the existence of the State of Israel.”
Post e-mails and telephone calls to Herzog were not immediately returned.
Herzog has so far refused to issue responses to the growing German and international criticism of his decision to honor Raheb.
The Media Control group, which awarded the prize to Raheb because his “acts are a symbol of humanity,” defended the award in an e-mail to the Post.
“The German Media prize [has worked] 20 years for neutrality, balance and peace. And that is why [former prime minister] Yitzhak Rabin and [President] Shimon Peres were honored,” wrote Karlheinz Kögel, the founder of the Medien prize. He added that he has “generously supported the Peres Center for Peace.”
“In this year, we will make sure that the [award ceremony] event supports the coming peace process,” he continued. “The prize ceremony will not be misused for one-sided statements.”
Stuart Dauermann has an interesting post here which helps us gain insight into the default anti-Israel stance of the mainline historic Protestant Christian denominations. It certainly informs as to why Christ at the Checkpoint is drawing so many Protestant Christian leaders.
Again we see in place a liberal tendency to prefer the general to the specific, an antipodal antipathy to particularism, and surely, to Jewish particularism. Israel is assumed to be the destabilizing factor in the region.
We also note an antipathy toward, and stereotyping stigmatization of what is commonly termed Christian Zionism, any theological enthusiasm for the Jewish state and its eschatological significance. This is why the Introduction of the Assembly’s Statement on the Middle East laments how “historical factors and certain theological interpretations have often confused Christians outside in evaluating the religious and political developments in the Middle East.”[1] This is code language for disparaging and stigmatizing Christian Zionism as an unhelpful source of confusion and instability. It seems clear that the World Council of Churches feels obligated to side with the (Arab) churches in the Middle East and how their leaders represent themselves, their people and their plight. It also seems clear that Israeli Jews would do well to look elsewhere than to the World Council for fairness, support and understanding. This would include the many Israeli Jesus believers whose protest against such World Council construals of the situation remain unaddressed.
Finally, I would like to ask what the fundamental difference is between today’s secular Jewish nation of Israel and the Pharisees of Jesus’ day? Both reject Christ as the Messiah and persecute Christians in Palestine. Should we support a government, any government, who persecutes our brothers and sisters in Christ?
So the Jews are basically, bad evil Pharisees.
Keith Giles must have missed that Paul identified as a Pharisee, long after becoming a disciple of Yeshua. Yeshua himself moved amongst the Pharisees, some warned him of Herod’s evil intentions against him, and the Pharisee Joseph of Arimathea even gave Yeshua a proper burial tomb.
Here is Keith Giles interviewing Christ at the Checkpoint 2012 social media organiser and tweeter, Porter Speakman Jr:
PORTER: The Old Testament is full of that sort of thing. God constantly addressed ideas of justice with the Jews all the time. Even the King of Israel couldn’t oppress non-Jews without incurring God’s wrath. Today we want to give Israel carte blanche and allow them to do whatever they want without ever questioning what is being done, and frankly that’s not being a very good friend to Israel.
KEITH: No it’s not.
PORTER: We need to love them enough to say that what they’re doing is wrong and try to help them find better responses.
KEITH: In Psalms 50 God calls the Jews “my Holy Ones” and later he says to the same people, “you wicked” because they cast God’s words aside. So, “chosen ones” or not, the whole point of being blessed of God is to bless all the Nations. Even as Jesus pointed out, there were many lepers in Israel but the prophets were sent to the pagans.
PORTER: Yes, it’s not just that Christ was the Messiah, but that he was the Messiah for all nations and not just for the Jewish people.
Basically, Jews can’t be trusted to do “whatever they want”, so they need Gentile Christians like Porter Speakman to hold them in check.
Israel’s chosenness is deliberately used against Jews, in this interview. The underlying assumption, is that Jews think they have a right to persecute non-Jews, because they are “chosen ones”.
This interview won the Christ at the Checkpoint 2012 blogging prize, despite its pushing more antisemitic theology. Fitting.
First we went through a Hamas checkpoint, were they registered our names. Then we went to the Fatah checkpoint, which coordinates and the checks with the Israelis about every traveler before letting us go through to the Israelipoint. There we went through a very long and complicated search as if we were in an airport and even worst! They have very advanced technology and they also opened the bags and searched them piece by piece.
Obviously only the Israeli checkpoint is a theological problem or a sin!
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”.
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.
This mainstream clerical criticism, at its worst animosity, regarding Israel has become very visible at the moment because of the upcoming Christ at theCheckpoint (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 OnlyJustice, 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.
