Tag Archives: Mitri Raheb

Shane Claiborne: when Bonhoeffer tried to kill Hitler “the cross lost”

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Meet Christian speaker Shane Claiborne:

“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.

Israel slams award for pastor exposed by the Rosh Pina Project

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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.

Now in February 2012, the Jerusalem Post reports:

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.”

German Christians protest Christ at the Checkpoint speaker’s racist theology

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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.

Political Science professor at Rutgers U. condemns “Christ at the Checkpoint 2012″ conference

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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.

Read it all.

Simon Wiesenthal Center denounces Christ at the Checkpoint 2012

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The dean and director of interfaith relations at the Simon Wiesenthal Center writes for the Jerusalem Post today:

One of the most troubling purveyors of this stealth theo-terrorism lies within sight of Jerusalem. In 2010, Palestinian Christians convened the Christ at the Checkpoint (CATC) conference under the aegis of the Bethlehem Bible College, aimed specifically at Evangelicals. CATC repudiated Christian Zionism as a false teaching, an erroneous misreading and manipulation of Scripture.

One of the architects was Anglican vicar Stephen Sizer, who denies that he is an anti-Semite but hangs out with Holocaust revisionists and whose trip to Tehran included a defense of Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust denial. Other CATC participants, however, came from churches and schools completely identified with the traditional Evangelical mainstream.

Evangelicals who came with an open-minded commitment to hear both sides heard Mitri Raheb, a pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem deny the connection between modern Jews and those of the Bible.

“I’m sure if we were to do a DNA test between David… and Jesus… 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…. I always loved to say that most probably one of my grand, grand, grand, grandmas used to babysit for Jesus.”

No one stormed out in protest. Rather to the contrary: Some participants, like Lynne Hybels (who is married to the head of the Willow Creek network of 13,000 Evangelical congregations), returned to the US as committed workers for the Palestinian cause.

THE LIST of 2012 CATC conference participants includes names of those who used to be firm and unequivocal supporters of Israel. Among the scheduled speakers is the president of the World Evangelical Alliance, Sang-Bok David Kim. The WEA is the parent group of the National Association of Evangelicals, the largest Evangelical network in the US.

The “affirmations” representing the beliefs of the organizers have already been published. They include the supplanting of Christian Zionism with a supersessionist understanding of Scripture that leaves no room for Jews. In other words, all Scriptural covenants with the Jewish people, as well as its religious dignity, have been replaced and abrogated.

While most Christians have always believed that the New Testament fulfilled the Hebrew Scripture, many Evangelicals found room for a continued relationship between Jews, Divine promises, and even the physical Land of Israel.

With no one apparently noticing, that nuance is being deleted.

Another affirmation deals with Jewish Zionism.

“Modern Zionism is a political movement created to meet the aspirations of Jews around the world who longed for a homeland,” it begins, quickly growing ugly: “It has become ethnocentric, privileging one people at the expense of others.”

So, Zionism wasn’t always equal to racism, but it is today, according to CATC’s organizers. The UN’s debunked “Zionism is Racism” has been reborn in theological garb, absorbed and preached by some who a few years ago were among Israel’s greatest allies.

Read it all.

I should say, pace the writer of this piece, I support “the Palestinian cause” in seeking a homeland with borders, and a national identity – peaceful and side-by-side with Israel.

On the topic of interfaith, I do think the author could have mentioned the fact that,  unfortunately, three leaders from the Messianic movement - Richard Harvey, Evan Thomas andWayne Hilsden - are booked as speakers at Christ at the Checkpoint 2012.

As I wrote in the Huffington Post:

Many Jews who make a personal decision to believe in Christ, also known as Messianic Jews, now feel very vulnerable because of this conference. Indeed, most Messianic Jews are hugely disappointed that the Checkpoint conference will take place with the blessing of the wider church. We feel let down by many institutions within Christianity, and we are sure they can do more to eliminate antisemitism in Christian theology.

Their participation in Checkpoint 2012 is a scandal, and one that deserves exposure before the wider Jewish community.

Hudson Institute slams Christ at the Checkpoint racism

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Last month, we covered Mitri Raheb’s ramblings at Christ at the Checkpoint 2010, about Binyamin Netanyahu not having any Jewish blood. According to Raheb, Netanyahu is descended from an Eastern European tribe. This idea is based on the Khazar theory, which is popular among modern antisemites.

Now a major US liberal thinktank has joined in the discussion about Raheb’s scandalous antisemitism.

Malcolm Lowe writes for The Hudson Institute:

His second assumption is outrageous, echoing nineteenth century attempts to obscure the Jewish origins of Jesus, which peaked in the “Aryan Christianity” of Nazi Germany. It is that “the Palestinian people and part of the Jewish people are the continuation of the peoples of the land” whereas “Israel represents Rome of the Bible, not the people of the land.”

Why? Because “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.”

Even if Raheb’s claims about the ancestry of himself and Binyamin Netanyahu were true, he would be putting them at the service of a shameless racism. But, of course, he also has not the slightest evidence to support those claims. He knows nothing of Netanyahu’s ancestry. And he himself, for all he knows, may be descended from Greek pilgrims or from Europeans who arrived with the Crusaders, as I have pointed out elsewhere. As for DNA, had he taken the trouble, Raheb could have found that genetic studies on Jews have shown that European Jews are genetically much more closely related to Jews in the Middle East, and even to some non-Jews there, than to non-Jewish Europeans.

Recall that the leitmotif of “Christ at the Checkpoint” was the claim that today Israeli checkpoints would prevent Joseph, Mary and Jesus from ever getting to Bethlehem. In fact, of course, if today a Jewish couple expecting their first child tried to set up house in Bethlehem, they would be denounced by the UN, the US State Department and all the world’s foreign ministries as illegal settlers. And Mary would be lucky to live long enough to give birth.

So here comes Raheb to the rescue. As Yasser Arafat liked to say, Jesus and Mary were not Jews but Palestinians; so no problem. “And being born just across the street from where Jesus was born,” adds Raheb, “I always loved to say that most probably one of my grand, grand, grand, grandmas used to babysit for Jesus.” Once again, Raheb displays ignorance of or contempt for his Bible. According to Matthew’s Gospel, the Holy Family fled Bethlehem for Egypt shortly after the birth of Jesus. If anyone babysat for Jesus, it was Copts.

We need not pursue further Raheb’s “new thinking” except to note its fundamental aim: to show that wherever the Bible talks about a Chosen People, it means today’s Palestinians and specifically the Palestinian Arab Christians. Yes, he really means to make that preposterous claim.

Read it all here.

Will the organisers of Christ at the Checkpoint 2012 apologise for this?

(Via Elder of Ziyon)