CHRISTIANS WHO HATE JEWS
By GIULIO MEOTTI, YNET–
A
few weeks ago a highly influential Church of England vicar, Stephen
Sizer, promoted a website that supports Holocaust denial and warns of a
Zionist conspiracy controlling the world. Reverend Sizer just received
the support of the Bishop of Guildford Sizer, Reverend Christopher Hill,
a former chaplain to the Queen, following calls for him to be suspended
for linking to the site.
Sizer
used his Facebook page to link to the piece on American website The
Ugly Truth, which claims to highlight “Zionism, Jewish extremism and a
few other nasty items making our world uninhabitable today.” The site
also runs cartoons of Holocaust deniers and supports Iran president
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The
Bishop of Willesden was suspended in 2010 after using his Facebook page
to make inappropriate gossip remarks about the Duke and Duchess of
Cambridge. But in the face of such blatant anti-Jewish hatred, the
Church of England took Sizer’s side.
The
case is severe because Anglicanism is not just another Protestant
denomination; rather, it’s the official UK Church headed by the Queen.
Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, is the spiritual head of 77
million Christians worldwide.
The
hostility to IDF as “Herod’s soldiers operating in Bethlehem today”
(King Herod ordered his troops to kill all the Jewish babies in and
around Bethlehem.)
Sizer
promoted boycotts of companies on the basis that they “channel their
profits to the Zionist agenda.” Sizer’s book, “Christian Zionism:
Road-map to Armageddon?”, which has been endorsed by leading British and
American bishops, rejects the eternalness of God’s promises to the
Jewish people and revives the obscurantist anti-Jewish theology known as
“supersessionism.”
‘Israel an illegal regime’
Sizer’s
case is not isolated. In 2006 the UK Church reviewed its investments in
companies with ties to Israel’s presence in the territories. Bishop
Riah El-Assal, the Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem, is a well-known
apologist for Palestinian terrorism. Anglican cleric Naim Ateek is the
founder of the notoriously anti-Israel, Jerusalem-based Sabeel
Ecumenical Liberation Center, which promotes a theology severing any
link between God and the Jews.
Sizer
is one of the major organizers of the “Christ at the Checkpoint 2012
Conference,” which the Bible College of Bethlehem will host in March.
The impressive range of theologians and pastors from churches located in
the United States make the gravity of the upcoming conference and
Sizer’s important position much clearer. Samuel Rodriguez, President of
the US National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, “spiritual
adviser” to Bill Clinton Tony Campolo, and President of the World
Evangelical Alliance and Asia Evangelical Alliance, Sang-Bok David Kim,
will all attend the event.
The
“Bethlehem Call” manifesto, which serves as platform for the Bethlehem
2012 Conference, has just been published on the websites of the World
Council of Churches, the Global Ministries of the United Church of
Christ and the Disciples of Christ. It defines Israel as an “illegal
regime” and a “crime against humanity” and promotes “international
boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns” against Israel.
In the words of UK columnist Melanie Phillips, these are “Christians who hate the Jews.”
Many
UK clerics are now saying openly that the Jewish State should never
have been founded at all. In 1190, British Christians slaughtered York’s
Jews after calling them “serpens antiquus qui vocatur Diabolus et
Satans.” Now their Intifada from Heaven is breathing new life into a
kind of demonology that bans Israel from the family of nations.
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Giulio
Meotti, a journalist with Il Foglio, is the author of the book A New
Shoah: The Untold Story of Israel’s Victims of Terrorism
