Nowadays, conversion of Jews is no longer of interest, but Palestinian olive oil is. The Church of Scotland’s St. Andrews church and guesthouse in Jerusalem is a center for anti-Israel intellectualism. Its website is designed by the “Alquds network.” It has a gift shop that sells products produced by Sunbala, a non-profit organization that supports “Palestinian artisans” and sells things like clothes and olive oil. Needless to say there is no support for Jewish artisans.
The Anglican Church also originally arrived in the Holy Land in the 1820s with missionaries who attempted to convert Jews. Palestinian Anglican bishops at Jerusalem’s St. George’s Church such as Riah Hanna Abu El-Assal have made anti-Israel comments and supported the Anglican Peace and Justice Network which works for divestment and boycotts of Israel.
Anglican clergyman Naim Ateek, founder of the Sabeel Liberation Theology Center, has blamed “Israeli oppression” for suicide bombings and in a 2006 article supported the election of Hamas, claiming its “violence was provoked by Israel’s policies against the Palestinians as well as Israel’s contempt of International Law through its confiscation of Palestinian land.”
(This past June, former president Jimmy Carter met with Palestinian churchmen in Jerusalem, Ateek among them. And as Mark Tooley recently noted in The Weekly Standard, “on July 20 [Ateek] was interviewed on KUOW Puget Sound Public Radio, broadcasting his themes of Israel’s similarity to South African Apartheid, the injustice of Israel’s security barrier, and his insistence that Palestinian Christians are dwindling in numbers because of Israel and not because of Hamas or radical Islam.”)
In a 2004 article for the Christian Palestinian newsletter The Stone, a publication of Ateek’s Sabeel Ecumenical center in Jerusalem, Jonathan Kuttab, a lawyer and member of Sabeel’s board, claimed that “Jews now constitute a powerful, dominant and controlling force…not only in their own affairs, but exercising power over others, including the small number of Palestinian Christians…. While the anti-Semitic persecution of Jews was certainly sinful and un-Christian, is the current support of their arrogance the right response?”
Kuttab may decry “anti-Semitic persecution,” but his depiction of Jews as “powerful, dominant and controlling” plays to classic anti-Semitic stereotypes even as he justifies it in the context of a form of liberation theology supported by clergy of a church that originally staked out a position in the Land of Israel for the sole purpose of converting Jews.
But the most egregious example of all is the American Colony, originally a messianic organization established in Jerusalem in 1881 but which later became Jerusalem’s most prestigious hotel – the hot gathering spot for journalists, PLO members and UN workers.
Though it did provide some help to Yemenite Jews in 1882, the American Colony in later years was up to its ears in anti-Zionist activity. According to a 1947 report, “The anti-Zionist stand recently adopted by the Christian Century [magazine] is in part ultimately traceable to the influence of the American Colony in Jerusalem and to the persons whom it has prejudiced…. Its view, moreover, is largely conditioned by its international and anti-nationalistic liberalism…. This merely is another illustration of the principle which has led prominent Christian pacifists to share the same platform with fascist and anti-Semitic America First propagandists.”
The hypocrisy of these organizations cannot be stated more clearly. In their attempts to create “peace” they foster war, hatred, anti-Semitism and nationalism. Their origins lie in the hatred of Judaism that is inherent in conversionary efforts, and in the collaboration of some of their leading lights first with the Nazis and now with radical Palestinians.