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Kirkenes Verdensråd om Israel: En dødbringende skildring
SMA-info nr. 1 – 2012
[1] “What is the World Council of Churches?” World Council of Churches, www.oikoumene.org/en/who-are-we.html, accessed 6 July 2011.
[2] The WCC has issued numerous statements in support of nuclear disarmament, which can be seen at “Documents on nuclear weapons,” www.oikoumene.org/en/resources/documents/wcc-commissions/international-affairs/peace-and-disarmament/nuclear-weapons.html, accessed 6 July 2011.
[3] Peter Weiderud, “Religious Freedom and Liberty in the Emerging Context,” presentation by Peter Weiderud, director, CCIA, at the EKD Working Group on Religious Freedom, Hanover, 18 December 2003, www.oikoumene.org/resources/documents/wcc-commissions/international-affairs/human-rights-and-impunity/religious-freedom-and-liberty-in-the-emerging-context.html, accessed 6 July 2011.
[4] Anonymous, “Women in Church and Society,” World Council of Churches, www.oikoumene.org/en/programmes/the-wcc-and-the-ecumenical-movement-in-the-21st-century/women-in-church-and-society.html, accessed 11 July 2011.
[5] Anonymous, “WCC and Climate Change,” World Council of Churches, www.oikoumene.org/gr/programmes/justice-diakonia-and-responsibility-for-creation/eco-justice/climate-change.html, accessed 11 July 2011.
[6] Anonymous, “Public witness: addressing power, affirming peace,” World Council of Churches, www.oikoumene.org/en/programmes/public-witness-addressing-power-affirming-peace.html, accessed 11 July 2011.
[7] Anonymous, “Assembly,” World Council of Churches, www.oikoumene.org/en/who-are-we/organization-structure/governing-bodies/assembly.html, accessed 8 July 2011.
[8] Anonymous, “Central Committee,” World Council of Churches, www.oikoumene.org/en/who-are-we/organization-structure/governing-bodies/central-committee.html, accessed 8 July 2011.
[9] Anonymous, “Executive Committee,” www.oikoumene.org/en/who-are-we/organization-structure/governing-bodies/executive-committee.html, 8 July 2011.
[10] A cursory search of the websites of mainline U.S. Protestant churches will reveal numerous links to WCC documents.
[11] Professor Haim Genizi (curriculum vitae), www.biu.ac.il/JS/hy/genizi.html, accessed 16 May 2011.
[12] Haim Genizi, “The Attitude of the World Council of Churches (WCC) toward the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” in The Protestant-Jewish Conundrum, Studies in Contemporary Jewry, Jonathan Frank and Ezra Mendelsohn, eds., Vol. 24, published for the Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem by Oxford University Press, 2010, 91-105.
[13] Ibid., 91.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Ibid., 102.
[16] Ibid.
[17] www.oikoumene.org.
[18] CCAR resolution on the 2009 Kairos Document, Board of Trustees, Central Conference of American Rabbis, 15 April 2010, http://data.ccarnet.org/cgi-bin/resodisp.pl?file=kairos&year=2010, accessed 17 July 2011.
[19] Natan Sharansky, “3D Test of Anti-Semitism: Demonization, Double Standards, Delegitimization,” Jewish Political Studies Review 16:3-4 (Fall 2004), www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/showpage.asp?DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=84&FID=625, accessed 4 May 2011.
[20] It is important not to view the WCC as a monolithic body. As can be expected from any large organization with a number of moving parts, there is some “slippage” between the decisions made by the WCC’s various decision-making bodies such as the Executive Committee, the Central Committee, the Assembly, the CCIA and the institutions they supervise such as the EAPPI and the PIEF. EAPPI materials, for example, are sometimes accompanied by a disclaimer that says they do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the WCC as a whole. Nevertheless, the WCC holds the copyright for these materials, which are produced and broadcast by WCC staffers and activists using WCC funds. Consequently, while it cannot be said that the WCC is speaking “ex cathedra” through the EAPPI or the PIEF, the organization’s leaders do allow its staffers and activists to use WCC resources to assail Israel on a regular basis. The overall signal coming out of the WCC’s decision-making bodies, its staffers, and the programs it supports is decidedly hostile to Israel. This hostility became much more pronounced after the start of the Second Intifada.
[21] The phrase “lethal narrative” was coined by Nidra Poller to describe the story told by Muslim extremists and their allies to justify violence against the West in general and Israel in particular. See Nidra Poller, “Lethal Narratives: Weapon of Mass Destruction in the War against the West,” New English Review, June 2009, www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/40822/sec_id/40822, accessed 8 July 2011.
[22] The process that led to the creation of the World Council of Churches in 1948 began at a meeting of thirty-five church representatives held at Westfield College in Hampstead, England, in July 1937, just two years before the outbreak of World War II. At this meeting, the delegates approved a resolution that called for the merger of two preexisting ecumenical movements, one known as “Life and Work” and the other as “Faith and Order,” into one body. In May the following year, a group of delegates met in Utrecht to prepare a draft constitution for the organization. A meeting of the Provisional Committee of the World Council of Churches in January 1939 called for the First Assembly of the World Council of Churches to take place in August 1941, but this assembly did not occur because of the fighting that broke out in September 1939. Members of the Provisional Committee continued to meet during World War II, and more churches joined the organization as the war progressed. In 1946, the Provisional Committee met to set the date for the First Assembly of the organization, which took place in 1948. (See The World Council of Churches, Its Process of Formation: Minutes and reports of the meeting of the Provisional Committee Held at Geneva from February 21st to 23rd, 1946; the constitutional documents of the World Council of Churches and an introduction by W. A. Visser ‘t Hooft [Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1946], 5-14.)
[23] For details about this process, see Robert P. Ericksen and Susannah Heschel, eds., Betrayal: German Churches and the Holocaust (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1999), 50-52.
[24] The World Council of Churches, Its Process of Formation: Minutes and reports of the meeting of the Provisional Committee Held at Geneva from February 21st to 23rd, 1946; the constitutional documents of the World Council of Churches and an introduction by W. A. Visser ‘t Hooft (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1946), 33-34.
[25] Ibid., 35-36.
[26] After a spate of anti-Semitic attacks in Europe, the WCC reiterated its opposition to anti-Semitism at its Third Assembly, which took place in New Delhi in 1961. After recalling a portion of the 1948 resolution condemning anti-Semitism, the Assembly stated that it “renews this plea in view of the fact that situations continue to exist in which Jews are subject to discrimination and even persecution.” After calling on WCC member churches “to do all in their power to resist every form of anti-semitism,” the Assembly stated that “the Crucifixion should not be so presented as to fasten upon the Jewish people of today responsibilities which belong to corporate humanity and not to one race or community. Jews were the first to accept Jesus and Jews are not the only ones who do not yet recognize him.”
These statements have not stopped the WCC from producing theological texts that include, in the words of Amy-Jill Levine, “anti-Jewish obscenities.” Levine reports that “the WCC, along with Orbis Books, Fortress Press, numerous university presses, and others, also distributes the ‘teaching of contempt’ for Judaism and Jews. The organization’s formal pronouncements stand in contradiction to what its press publishes and what its officers and clergy write.” In her research, Levine discovered new manifestations of old problems: a view of Judaism not only as misogynistic but also as filled with “taboos,” particularly uninformed understandings of rabbinic literature, a version of multiculturalism that praises all distinct practices except for those associated with Judaism, and a theology that intimates the ancient heresy known as Marcionism by distinguishing the God of Judaism from the God of Jesus.
See Amy-Jill Levine, The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus (San Francisco: HarperSanfranscico, 2006), 169-171.
Levine also reports that, to its credit, the WCC has admitted the problem and taken steps to rectify it. She notes, however, that there is still a problem. “But, what is on the library shelves in Lagos and Lima, Nairobi and Nashville, remains fodder for anti-Judaism. In the summer of 2004, when I was living in a Maryknoll convent in the Philippines, I found such material easily available, waiting to infect another generation.” See Anonymous, “Preaching and Teaching the New Testament: Promoting Anti-Judaism,” Anti-Defamation League, 1 November 2007, www.adl.org/main_Interfaith/newtestament.htm, accessed 13 July 2011.
[27] The First Assembly of the World Council of Churches (Amsterdam), Committee IV, “Concerns of the Churches: The Christian Approach to the Jews,” The Message and Reports of the First Assembly of the World Council of Churches: With Aids to Study and Discussion (London: World Council of Churches, 1948), 79. The relevant text can also be seen at
http://jcrelations.net/en/?item=1489, accessed 6 July 2011. Note that as of 6 July 2011, the WCC’s “extract” of this resolution posted on the internet (www.oikoumene.org/gr/resources/documents/assembly/amsterdam-1948/concerns-of-the-churches-the-emergence-of-israel-as-a-state.html) omits the crucial passage about Israel being a cause of anti-Semitism in the future.
[28] Paul Charles Merkley, Christian Attitudes towards the State of Israel (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001), 45.
[29] Isaac Rottenberg, The Turbulent Triangle: Christians, Jews, Israel (Hawley, PN: Red Mountain Associates, 1989), 49.
[30] World Council of Churches Central Committee, “Statement on the Middle East,” Report from Reference Committee II, Minutes and Reports of the Twentieth Meeting, Heraklion, Crete, Greece (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1967), 47.
[31] Gershom Gorenberg, The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977 (New York: Henry Holt, 2006), 10.
[32] Ibid., 12.
[33] Ibid.
[34] Ibid.
[35] “Statement on the Middle East,” The Fourth Assembly of the World Council of Churches (Uppsala, July 1968), www.oikoumene.org/en/resources/documents/assembly/uppsala-1968/statement-on-the-middle-east.html, accessed 18 July 2011.
[36] This letter is quoted at length in another letter to the Central Committee of the Palestinian Liberation Front from CCIA director Leopoldo J. Niilus, dated 2 June 1972.
[37] “Palestinian National Charter of 1964,” Permanent Observer Mission of Palestine to the United Nations, www.un.int/wcm/content/site/palestine/pid/12363, accessed 8 July 2011.
[38] The text of this telegram was included in Eugene Carson Blake’s letter to the Central Committee of the Palestinian Liberation Front, dated 6 September 1972.
[39] Lebanon was the scene of severe acts of violence and oppression as a result of a civil war that began with the attempted assassination of the country’s president, Pierre Gemayel, a Christian Phalangist, on 13 April 1975. In response to the attack, which left four dead, Phalangists, threatened by the PLO’s growing influence in Lebanon, attacked a busload of mostly-civilian Palestinians and killed twenty-seven passengers. This was the first of many massacres that tore Lebanon apart in the ensuing decades. “The war was on, and there was no force capable of stopping it,” writes Sandra Mackey in A Mirror of the Arab World: Lebanon in Conflict (New York: W. W. Norton, 2008), Kindle location 1050. Some, but not all of these massacres were perpetrated by the PLO.
[40] Murray Kahl, “Yasir Arafat and the Christians of Lebanon,” Arutz Sheva, 13 January 2002, www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/786, accessed 8 July 2011.
[41] Ibid.
[42] Fay Willey et al., “The Fall of Tal Zataar,” Newsweek, 23 August 1976, 49.
[43] “The WCC’s Executive Appeal on Lebanon,” Ecumenical Review 28-3 (July 1976): 350.
[44] World Council of Churches Central Committee, “Lebanon,” Minutes, Twenty-Ninth Meeting of the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches, Geneva, 10-18 August 1976, 43.
[45] For example, on 22 May 1970 the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (General Command) – a constituent body of the PLO – killed twelve civilians, including eight children, on an Israeli school bus traveling on the road between Avivim and Dovev. In May 1974, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) took 120 people, most of them children, hostage at Maalot for two days. At the end of the standoff, twenty-five people including twenty-two children were murdered by the PFLP. And in 1978, PLO terrorists infiltrated Israel, hijacked a bus, and murdered nearly everyone on it. The PLO also had launched numerous artillery strikes that drove Israeli civilians into bomb shelters. At the time of Israel’s invasion, the PLO was using the cease-fire to rearm and prepare for another round of violence.
[46] Commission of the Churches on International Affairs et al., “Invasion of Lebanon: Christian Response in Face of the Threat to Lebanese and Palestinian Existence,” World Council of Churches, 1982.
[47] All of the responses included in the compendium condemned Israel for its actions and gave the PLO a pass. For example, the WCC reprinted a telegram sent by leaders of the United Presbyterian Church to the Reagan administration on 9 June 1982. It stated that Present military actions by Israel forces have violated the sovereignty of Lebanon and broken the cease-fire arranged by Ambassador Habib between Israel and the PLO, which has been observed by the PLO for nine months. Israel seized upon the attempted assassination of Ambassador Argov as cause to mount a massive bombing of Lebanon despite PLO denials of involvement and before any evidence of PLO culpability.
The United Church of Christ and the Disciples of Christ issued a similar statement that condemned Israel for transgressing “the bounds of legitimate self-defense.” A press release from the Middle East Council of Churches – which has long represented many of the dhimmi churches operating in Muslim-majority countries in the region – also condemned Israel and said nothing about the PLO’s misdeeds.
[48] Ibid., 5.
[49] Ibid.
[50] Ibid., 8-9.
[51] “Arafat’s Speech to DFLP 13th Anniversary Rally,” BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, 23 February 1982. Source: Voice of Palestine (i) in English 1500 gmt, (ii) in Arabic 1630 gmt, 21 February 1982. (The quoted section is from the Arabic translation.)
[52] Fatah political platform adopted by the Fourth Fatah Conference in May 1980, in Raphael Israeli, ed., PLO in Lebanon: Selected Documents (New York: St. Martin’s, 1983), 13.
[53] David K. Shipler, “Lebanese Tell of Anguish of Living Under the P.L.O.,” New York Times, 25 July 1982.
[54] Ibid.
[55] Frank Gervasi, “A story of PLO terror in Lebanon: Prominent Christians claim murders, rapes, mutilations are commonplace,” Los Angeles Times Examiner, 13 July 1982.
[56] Commission of the Churches on International Affairs et al., “Invasion of Lebanon: Christian Response in Face of the Threat to Lebanese and Palestinian Existence,” World Council of Churches, 1982, 5.
[57] Central Committee of the World Council of Churches, “Statement on the Middle East,” Minutes of the Thirty-Fourth Meeting, Geneva (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1982), 83.
[58] “Sixth Assembly Statement on the Middle East,” World Council of Churches General Assembly, Vancouver, July-August 1983, www.oikoumene.org/en/resources/documents/assembly/vancouver-1983/statement-on-the-middle-east.html, accessed 19 July 2011.
[59] Ibid., 53.
[60] Erick R. Nelson and Alan F. H. Wisdom, “Human Rights Advocacy in the Mainline Protestant Churches (2000-2003),” Institute on Religion and Democracy, 2004, 17. In its assessment of the WCC’s witness on human rights, the IRD reported that out of the eighty-three human rights criticisms leveled at various countries throughout the world, Israel was the target of 36 or 43 percent of these statements while other nations with much worse human rights records such as Haiti, Cuba, Burma, Sudan, Pakistan, Iraq, and Zimbabwe – all nations designated by Freedom House – only received a total of sixteen criticisms from the WCC (12-13).
[61] The full text of the resolution can be seen at J. A. Emerson Vermaat, “The Would Council of Churches and the Afghanistan Crisis 1980-1984,” Conflict Quarterly 5:3 (summer 1985): 18, http://journals.hil.unb.ca/index.php/JCS/article/viewFile/14679/15748, accessed 12 July 2011.
[62] Ibid., 6.
[63] Ibid., 8.
[64] Ibid.
[65] Ibid., 9.
[66] Ibid., 9-10.
[67] When confronted with the difference between the Central Committee’s silence on Afghanistan and its robust condemnation of North Korea’s attack on South Korea in 1950, the WCC’s general secretary informed his listeners that Korea had “a strong Christian community” while Afghanistan had none. In fact, “the country involved is strongly pagan. One cannot refer to it in the same way” (ibid., 11).
[68] Ibid., 14.
[69] World Council of Churches Central Committee, “Minute on the situation in the Holy Land after the outbreak of the second Palestinian uprising,” adopted by the Central Committee, Potsdam, Germany, 29 January-6 February 2001, www.oikoumene.org/gr/resources/documents/wcc-commissions/international-affairs/regional-concerns/middle-east/israeli-palestinian-conflict-minute-on-the-situation-in-the-holy-land-after-the-outbreak-of-the-second-palestinian-uprising.html, accessed 20 July 2011.
[70] World Council of Churches, “Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Background Document on the Situation in the Middle East,” Commended to the churches by the Central Committee, 29 January-February 2001, www.oikoumene.org/gr/resources/documents/wcc-commissions/international-affairs/regional-concerns/middle-east/israeli-palestinian-conflict-minute-on-the-situation-in-the-holy-land-after-the-outbreak-of-the-second-palestinian-uprising.html, accessed 29 August 2011.
[71] Khaled Abu Toameh, “How the war began,” Jerusalem Post, 20 September 2002. Toameh also reports:
Imad Faluji, the PA communications minister, admitted on October 11, 2001, that the violence had been planned in July, far in advance of Sharon’s “provocation.” He said: “Whoever thinks that the intifada broke out because of the despised Sharon’s visit to Al-Aksa Mosque, is wrong, even if this visit was the straw that broke the back of the Palestinian people. This intifada was planned in advance, ever since President Arafat’s return from the Camp David negotiations, where he turned the table upside down on President Clinton. [Arafat] remained steadfast and challenged [Clinton]. He rejected the American terms and he did it in the heart of the US.”
[72] “Programme of Visit,” World Council of Churches Delegation to Occupied Palestinian Territories/Israel 27 June-July 2001, http://web.archive.org/web/20080310190028/www.wcc-coe.org/wcc/what/international/visitprog.html, accessed 15 July 2011.
[73] For a discussion of this phenomenon, see Kenneth Levin, The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People under Siege (Hanover, NH: Smith & Kraus, 2005).
[74] World Council of Churches, “Report of the WCC delegation to the Occupied Palestinean [sic] Territories & Israel June 27-July 1, 2001,” 6 August 2001, www.oikoumene.org/en/resources/documents/wcc-programmes/public-witness-addressing-power-affirming-peace/middle-east-peace/report-of-delegation-to-israelpalestine.html, accessed 15 July 2011.
[75] World Council of Churches, “Background paper on the draft declaration and programme of action, submitted to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights,” 15 August 2001, www.oikoumene.org/es/documentacion/documents/comisiones-del-cmi/asuntos-internacionales/united-nation-relations/world-conferences/world-conference-against-racism-racial-discrimination-xenophobia-and-related-intolerance-durban-south-africa-26-august-7-september-2001.html, accessed 21 July 2011.
[76] Michael J. Jordan, “Jewish Activists Stunned by Hostility, Anti-Semitism at Durban Conference,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 5 September 2001; Aleza Goldsmith, “Lantos: ‘I saw the raw face of anti-Semitism’ in Durban,” Jewish Bulletin, 14 September 2001; Caroline B. Glick, “Human Rights and Wrongs,” Moment, August 2002.
[77] “Doctor Beaten in S.A. by attackers chanting anti-Jewish slogans,” Haaretz.com, 4 September 2001, www.haaretz.com/news/doctor-beaten-in-s-a-by-attackers-chanting-anti-jewish-slogans-1.68881, accessed 22 July 2011.
[78] World Council of Churches, “Background paper on the draft declaration and programme of action, submitted to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights,” 15 August 2001, www.oikoumene.org/es/documentacion/documents/comisiones-del-cmi/asuntos-internacionales/united-nation-relations/world-conferences/world-conference-against-racism-racial-discrimination-xenophobia-and-related-intolerance-durban-south-africa-26-august-7-september-2001.html, accessed 21 July 2011.
[79] Ibid.
[80] Walid Phares, The Coming Revolution: Struggle for Freedom in the Middle East (New York: Threshold Editions, 2010), 69.
[81] World Council of Churches, “Background paper on the draft declaration and programme of action, submitted to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights,” 15 August 2001, www.oikoumene.org/es/documentacion/documents/comisiones-del-cmi/asuntos-internacionales/united-nation-relations/world-conferences/world-conference-against-racism-racial-discrimination-xenophobia-and-related-intolerance-durban-south-africa-26-august-7-september-2001.html, accessed 21 July 2011.
[82] Ibid.
[83] World Council of Churches, “WCC expresses condolences for Arafat, hopes for justice with peace,” 11 November 2004, www.oikoumene.org/en/news/news-management/eng/a/browse/10/article/1634/wcc-expresses-condolences.html?tx_ttnews%5Bcat%5D=95%2C27&cHash=ce10bde8e6291d0bac91a1ceac05b3c5, accessed 21 July 2011.
[84] Dexter Van Zile, “The U.S. Presbyterian Church’s Renewed Attack on Israel,” Post-Holocaust and Anti-Semitism 98, June 2010, www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=111&FID=381&PID=470&IID=3876, accessed 22 July 2011.
[85] World Council of Churches, “Minute on Certain Economic Measures for Peace in Israel/Palestine,” World Council of Churches Central Committee, Geneva, 15-22 February 2005, www.oikoumene.org/fr/documentation/documents/commissions-du-coe/affaires-internationales/regional-concerns/middle-east/minute-on-certain-economic-measures-for-peace-in-israelpalestine.html, accessed 21 July 2011.
[86] “ADL Dismayed by World Council of Churches Decision to Pursue Divestment as Means to Punish Israel,” Anti-Defamation League, 22 February 2005, www.adl.org/PresRele/ChJew_31/4652_31.htm, accessed 22 July 2011.
[87] “World Council of Churches Refuses SWC Request to Rescind Israel Divestment Campaign,” Simon Wiesenthal Center, 24 March 2005, www.wiesenthal.com/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=lsKWLbPJLnF&b=4442249&ct=5851287, accessed 22 July 2011.
[88] “Understanding the WCC Central Committee Minute on Economic Measures for Peace in Israel/Palestine,” World Council of Churches, 22 July 2005, www.oikoumene.org/en/resources/documents/wcc-programmes/public-witness-addressing-power-affirming-peace/middle-east-peace/understanding-the-minute-on-economic-measures-for-peace-in-israelpalestine.html, accessed 22 July 2011.
[89] “At Jewish-Christian gathering Kobia talks about divestment, calls for new alliances for life,” World Council of Churches, 25 July 2005, www.oikoumene.org/en/news/news-management/eng/a/browse/13/article/1634/at-jewish-christian-gathe.html?tx_ttnews%5Bcat%5D=112%2C28&cHash=8d728d552032c1af818b1223d19560c6, accessed 29 August 2011.
[90] Samuel Kobia, “The Courage to Hope and the Future of the Ecumenical Movement,” Report of the General Secretary, World Council of Churches Central Committee, 26 August-2 September 2009, www.oikoumene.org/en/resources/documents/central-committee/geneva-2009/reports-and-documents/report-of-the-general-secretary.html, accessed 22 July 2011.
[91] See Robert S. Wistrich, “Muslim Anti-Semitism: A Clear and Present Danger,” American Jewish Committee, 2002; Robert S. Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad (New York: Random House, 2009); Jeffrey Herf, Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World (Ann Arbor, MI: Sheridan Books, 2009); Tarek Fatah, The Jew Is Not My Enemy: Unveiling the Myths That Fuel Muslim Anti-Semitism (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2010).
[92] Olav Fykse Tveit, “Public Statement condemning the assault on a Gaza-bound vessel,” World Council of Churches, 1 June 2010, www.oikoumene.org/en/resources/documents/general-secretary/statements/statement-on-the-storming-of-a-gaza-bound-vessel.html, accessed 11 July 2011.
[93] Alex Safian, “Latest Video Clips: Gaza Flotilla Incident,” Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting, 20 June 2010, www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=7&x_issue=81&x_article=1859, accessed 25 July 2011.
[94] Palestinian Media Watch, “Gaza flotilla participants invoked the killing of Jews,” 31 May 2010, www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3L7OV414Kk&feature=player_embedded, accessed 29 August 2011.
[95] Ekklesia staff writers, “Women-only aid ship due to sail to blockaded Gaza,” 8 August 2010, www.oikoumene.org/de/programme/oeffentliches-zeugnis-macht-hinterfragen-fuer-frieden-eintreten/kirchen-im-nahen-osten/pief/news-events/a/article/7313/women-only-aid-ship-due-t.html, 25 July 2011.
[96] Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine Israel, “Overview,” www.eappi.org/index.php?id=4565, accessed 11 July 2011.
[97] Dexter Van Zile, “Key Mennonite Institutions against Israel,” Post Holocaust and Anti-Semitism, 83, 2 August 2009, www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DRIT=3&DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=111&FID=624&PID=0&IID=3023, accessed 12 July 2011.
[98] EAPPI’s homepage, www.eappi.org/index.php?id=4566, accessed 11 July 2011.
[99] This message is offered explicitly in an EAPPI promotional video, “Ending Occupation: Voices for a Just Peace,” produced by the WCC in 2002. An anonymous church leader in Jerusalem speaking off-camera states: “It’s the role of the church to remind the world that the root cause of the problem in the Middle East is occupation and once the occupation ends then there will be no violence, no counter-violence.”
[100] Such theme-park activism may not remain the exclusive domain of well-heeled Westerners. In November 2010, EAPPI held a training seminar for eighteen activists in Quezon City in an apparent effort to recruit accompaniers from the Philippines. The seminar was part of a larger conference organized by a Philippine activist group, Peace For Life, that inculcated attendees in the tenets of a “counter-imperial” faith.” Rev. Dr. Everett Mendoza reportedly called on participants to “denounce ‘the royal and imperial theology that underpins the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the triumphalist religious rhetoric that grounds US foreign policy in the region.’” According to conference materials, “The forum also agreed to support the BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) campaign.” See Anonymous, “Just and Lasting Peace in Palestine: A Philippine Solidarity Conference,” Peace For Life, www.peaceforlife.org/news/local/2010/10-1207-philconferenceonpalestine.html, accessed 16 May 2011.
[101] “Mary and Joseph Feature,” http://wcc-coe.org/wcc/photo-galleries/other/maryjoseph.html, accessed 12 July 2011.
[102] Larry Fata, “How would Mary and Joseph have fared at a checkpoint?”, World Council of Churches, www.oikoumene.org/en/news/news-management/eng/a/browse/10/article/1634/how-would-mary-and-joseph.html?tx_ttnews%5Bcat%5D=95%2C27&cHash=47f83d7555da1d360f3006e68bc8eeda, accessed 12 July 2011. This piece was also reprinted by the Office of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA). See http://oga.pcusa.org/perspectives/dec04/check.htm, accessed 12 July 2011.
[103] It should also be noted that Kassis played a central role in the authorship and publicity surrounding the Kairos Document.
[104] Rifat Odeh Kassis, “Editorial,” ChainReaction, 5, 2007, World Council of Churches, 2.
[105] Ibid.
[106] Ibid.
[107] Ronan Quin et al., “40 Ways to End the Occupation,” ChainReaction, 6, Summer 2007, World Council of Churches, 23-25.
[108] Eva Balslev and Sune Segal, “Security or Segregation?: The Humanitarian Consequences of Israel’s Wall of Separation,” World Council of Churches, Geneva, 2003.
[109] Larry Fata et al., “Sawahreh against the Wall: The Struggle of a Palestinian Village, Dealing with the Infringements on Freedom Brought About by Israel’s Ever-Tightening Occupation,” World Council of Churches Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel, Geneva, 4.
[110] World Council of Churches Central Committee, “Statement on the war in Lebanon and Northern Israel, and ecumenical action for Middle East Peace,” 30 August-6 September 2006, www.oikoumene.org/en/resources/documents/central-committee/geneva-2006/reports-and-documents/final-report-of-the-public-issues-committee-adopted.html, accessed 15 July 2011. The PIEF was officially founded at a conference in Jordan in 2007.
[111] World Council of Churches, “The Amman Call,” issued at WCC International Peace Conference, “Churches together for Peace and Justice in the Middle East,” Amman, 18-20 June 2007, www.oikoumene.org/en/resources/documents/wcc-programmes/public-witness-addressing-power-affirming-peace/middle-east-peace/the-amman-call.html, accessed 25 July 2011.
[112] World Council of Churches, Federation of Swiss Protestant Churches, Reform Churches Bern-Jura-Solothurn, “Final Document,” Palestine Israel Ecumenical Forum (PIEF), International Theological Conference on “Promised Land,” www.oikoumene.org/en/resources/documents/wcc-programmes/public-witness-addressing-power-affirming-peace/middle-east-peace/bern-perspective.html, accessed 25 July 2011.
[113] Sandro Magister, “The Patriarch’s Peace March, with an al-Fatah Escort,” 18 February 2002, http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/6918?eng=y, accessed 25 July 2011.
[114] Geries Khoury The Intifada of Heaven and Earth (Nazareth: Al-Hakim, 1989).
[115] Ibid., page D.
[116] Malcolm Lowe, “Israel and Palestinian Liberation Theology,” in James Parkes, Eugene B. Korn, and Roberta Kalechofsky, End of an Exile: Israel, Jews and the Gentile World (Marblehead, MA: Micah, 2005), 276.
[117] This author contacted the WCC and asked if the organization had any plans to establish an accompaniment program for Christians in Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East. Mark Beach, the WCC’s director of communications, responded, in part, as follows:
The EAPPI programme exists because the WCC member churches, including the churches in the Middle East called for this. Currently the WCC member churches and partners in Latin America are considering a similar programme in Colombia where there has been a long term conflict. Concerning Christians suffering persecution in Muslim-Majority countries the WCC does work closely with the churches in Pakistan and has called for the ending of the blasphemy laws which are subject to abuse not just against Christians but others as well. There has not been a call from our member churches in other locations of Muslim majority countries to develop a similar type of accompaniment programme.
Beach also stated that when addressing the persecution of Christians, “Great care is taken so that WCC activities do not increase their suffering” (email to author, 6 May 2011).
[118] World Council of Churches, Minute on the Presence and Witness of Christians in the Middle East, 22 February 2011, www.oikoumene.org/en/resources/documents/central-committee/geneva-2011/report-on-public-issues/minute-on-the-presence-and-witness-of-christians-in-the-middle-east.html, accessed 29 August 2011.
