When to be 'ecumenical' – and when not

With three teenagers kidnapped by terrorists in the West Bank, a huge search operation is underway.  Every branch of Israel’s security forces is involved – from the Border Police to the Air Force, from the Army Intelligence to the Paratroopers Corps.  Even Palestinian Authority policemen reportedly cooperate.  But there is one type of uniform that one does not encounter among those active in the search: the beige vests of EAPPI – the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme for Palestine and Israel.  That’s because help with rescuing three kids whose only ‘crime’ is being Jewish is not within the ‘ecumenical’ remit of that organisation.

To be or not to be 'ecumenical'

Funded by the World Council of Churches and operated by the Society of Quakers, EAPPI “brings internationals to the West Bank to experience [Palestinians’] life under [Israeli] occupation”, but not Israelis’ life under Palestinian terrorism; it aims primarily to “provide protective presence to vulnerable communities [read: ‘non-Jewish communities’], monitor and report human rights abuses [read: ‘Jewish abuses’]”.  In practice, the EAPPI activists (who can’t speak the local languages and come equipped with little knowledge and loads of preconceptions) are easily manipulated and further indoctrinated by their Palestinian handlers.  Part of the mission is, upon return, to ‘tell others what they saw’; or, rather, what they were shown.

Given the outfit’s title, naïves may assume that this is just one of the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programmes set up by the World Council of Churches – the one that acts ‘in Palestine and Israel’.  But it’s not.  It’s the only one.

Aftermath of suicide bombing near Mosul, Iraq

There is no Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme for Iraq, even while an Al-Qaeda splinter has taken control of large chunks of Iraqi territory and is threatening Baghdad itself.  The ‘Islamic State of Iraq and Syria’ (ISIS) has already conducted hundreds of summary executions of civilians and POWs.    So far, one million refugees have fled from the Jihadists.  And that’s on top of Iraq’s ‘normal’ level of inter-sectarian violence.  Which, according to the UN Mission in Iraq, has killed 10,679 people and injured 23,735 in the last 18 months.

Victims of war and inter-sectarian violence in Syria. There are at least 162,000 of these, at least 10,000 of them children. But not an 'ecumenical accompanier' in sight.

There is no Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme for nearby Syria, where the UN has already given up counting the human lives lost – people are simply killed faster than the international organisation can tally.  The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimates that over 162,000 people were killed, including more than 10,000 children.  Only God knows how many were maimed, tortured, raped.  There are 9 million refugees.  Palestinian refugees (or rather ‘people born in Syria for generations, but denied Syrian citizenship because they descend from Palestinian refugees’) are abundantly represented among the dead, the maimed and the fleeing.  But Palestinians only qualify for ‘Ecumenical Accompaniment’ when they are wronged by Jews.

There is no Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme for Egypt, where kangaroo courts sentence people to death, hundreds at a time.

Lest we forget – just like the World Council of Churches – the three countries mentioned above are home to sizable Christian communities.  The ‘are’ in the sentence above is gradually turning into ‘were’, as Christians flee the persecution of Islamists; but there are of course no 'ecumenical accompaniers' to “provide protective presence to [those] vulnerable communities”.

Execution in Iran. Were they 'enemies of God' or have they 'sown corruption on earth'?

There is no Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme for Iran, where 1,000 people have been executed in the past 18 months, on charges including ‘terrorist acts’,  ‘corruption on earth’, ‘attempt to overthrow the government’ and ‘enmity to God’.

Afghanistan after 13 years of Occupation: infant mortality rate 117 deaths/1,000 live births -- worst in the world (West Bank 13, Gaza 15). Literacy ratio: Afghanistan 28%; West Bank & Gaza 95%

There is no Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme for Afghanistan, a country still under US and UK occupation, where 46 people were killed in just one day (yesterday), in what the BBC calls ‘low level attacks’.

And that’s just a small part of the Middle East.  I could make this list much, much longer, cataloguing all the numerous and painful diseases that trouble our world.  But what would be the purpose?  Who cares?  Certainly not the World Council of Churches, whose one-and-only Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in the whole wide world operates in the West Bank.

According to the (very unfriendly to Israel) United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), in the past 18 months Israeli security forces have killed 27 West Bank Palestinians.  That number includes ‘Amer Ibrahim Naji Nassar and Naji ‘Abd a-Salam Naji al-Balbisi, shot while throwing Molotov cocktails at IDF soldiers; Yunes Ahmad Mahmoud a-Radaydeh, shot while bursting with a tractor into an IDF military base; Saleh Samir ‘Abd a-Rahman Yasin and Nafe’a Jamil Nafe’a a-S’adi, shot in an exchange of fire with IDF soldiers; and three armed members of an Al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist group, shot after refusing to surrender.

Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, Secretary General of the World Council of Churches and -- incidentally! -- also Co-Chair of the 'Palestine Israel Ecumenical Forum'

The West Bank is, of course, hardly a place of harmony and safety, though it may seem such to many a human being forced to live in much, much worse circumstances; without an ecumenical accompanier anywhere in sight.

I am tempted to ask the leaders of the World Council of Churches and those of the Quaker Movement to explain their choices and priorities, as expressed by the one-and-only Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme.  But I know from experience that all I’d hear would be pathetic and dishonest attempts at post-rationalisation.

So, instead, I’m only going to propose a small change of name.  Why not call it, for the sake of honesty and God's Truth, Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme for Communities Vulnerable to Jews?

'Gospel or Gossip' returns

In a recent post, Politically-incorrect Politics reported the case of Jeremy Moodey, CEO of a Christian charity with activities in the Middle East.  Writing in his CEO blog – published on the charity’s official website – Mr. Moodey accused the inhabitants of Shavei Shomron (an Israeli ‘settlement’ in the West Bank) of severely polluting “600 square kilometres of local Palestinian farming land”.  As Politically-incorrect Politics has shown, Mr. Moodey’s ‘source’ was an unverified accusation casually made by unidentified ‘Palestinian farmers’ (or, more likely, Palestinian activists acting as ‘guides’ to Western ‘useful idiots’).  However, even those ‘farmers’ only ‘estimated’ the alleged pollution as affecting 600 dunums, i.e. 0.6 square kilometres.  A EAPPI militant then conveyed the accusation in a blog post, in the process transforming the original ‘600 dunums’ unverified accusation into “around 600 dunumns [sic!] (square kilometres)”.  Mr. Moodey further distorted the report, by getting rid of the dunums altogether.  In effect, Mr. Moodey inflated the original (unverified) claim 1,000-fold and thus, publicly accused the Shavei Shomron community of polluting 600 square kilometres of land, i.e. an area equivalent to 11% of the entire West Bank, or approximately twice the size of the Isle of Wight.  Neither the EAPPI activist nor Mr. Moodey made any meaningful attempt to verify the veracity of the accusation; neither offered the accused community any opportunity to defend itself against that accusation, before trumpeting it to the entire world.

In comments he posted to a Politically-incorrect Politics blog on Times of Israel, Mr. Moodey has now admitted the facts above.

Under the oh-so-dreadful Israeli occupation,
poisoned by Jewish-generated 'pollution',
Palestinians are, clearly, 'disappearing'.

Honest people can sometimes make honest mistakes.  Yet Politically-incorrect Politics believes that in such case an honest person would apologise, publicly and prominently, for defaming an entire community.

Not Mr. Moodey, however: although forced to admit the distortion, he is totally unrepentant.  In his comment, he calls his 1,000-fold embellishment “one small arithmetical error” and blames it on the EAPPI militant.  Mr. Moodey hastened to correct his blog; strangely, however, rather than simply replacing the “600 square kilometres” fabrication with “0.6 square kilometres” (the original unverified accusation), Mr. Moodey resorts to yet another act of arithmetic contortionism: he now converts 0.6 square kilometres to “60 hectares”.  In other words, rather than making amends for the previous defamatory statement, he still does his utmost to embellish the (hearsay) allegation.  It seems to us that Mr. Moodey (an ex-bank executive) believes that his readers are so stupid, that they can be fooled using numeric artifices.  Politically-incorrect Politics hence suggests that he should perhaps try converting the area in question to square inch, or maybe even square millimetres.  This would certainly result in a much more ‘impressive’ number, thus further embellishing the ‘crime’ allegedly committed by those nasty Israelis!

An image from Jeremy Moodey's Facebook page

In addition to heading the charity, Mr. Moodey speaks on behalf of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), helping that organisation lure Christian audiences.  He is also a friend and collaborator of Rev. Stephen Sizer, who was recently accused of anti-Semitism.  Since Moodey claims that, in his relentless criticism of Israel (which has recently expanded to include the Board of Deputies of British Jews), he is animated by a yearning for justice, Politically-incorrect Politics finds it interesting to assess how that ‘justice’ works, in Mr. Moodey’s view.  One can learn this from the following passage, taken from his Times of Israel comment:

“We all make the odd mistake from time-to-time. But you seek to damn the whole blog, with its description of how West Bank settlers are polluting Palestinian farmland with their toxic waste water, by suggesting that this one small arithmetical error means that the whole article is 'slanderously conveying hearsay and gossip', yet you have not produced a shred of evidence to suggest that settlers are NOT polluting neighbouring farmland. If you can produce such evidence, I will happily put a blog on my website pointing my readers to it.”

It would appear that, when it comes to the Jewish State, Mr. Moodey’s ‘justice’ principle is “guilty unless proven innocent”.  The way it works is this: somebody (an unidentified individual or group, a fringe anti-Semitic website, a political activist, an NGO invaded by political activists, a political body or politician with an axe to grind, etc.)  makes an allegation – the more outlandish, the better (remember the accusation that Israeli medics aiding Haiti victims stole their organs?)  The accusation is then parroted by a cohort of Israel-haters, who embellish it further in the process; it then becomes Israel’s job to ‘produce evidence’ of its innocence.  What Mr. Moodey is saying sounds like: ‘there were reports that your sister is a whore – and you have produced no evidence to show that she is NOT’.  An interesting take on ‘justice’!

Incidentally, let us also note Mr. Moodey’s collective incrimination of “West Bank settlers”, who “are polluting Palestinian farmland with their toxic waste water”.  Assuming that ANY pollution has taken place (something Mr. Moodey seems to consider a priori true) – are they all guilty of that offense?  Is it possible that some of those ‘settlers’ – perhaps the vast majority of them – are innocent of that crime?  Collective guilt??  If someone were to say ‘See how Muslims in the UK are engaging in terrorism’, that someone would (rightly!) stand accused of racism.

All this does not come as a surprise.  In a recent blog, Politically-incorrect Politics has shed light on precisely such practices.  We wrote:

“And why bother to check the stories? After all – just like for that Stalinist judge – for these pursuers of ‘justice’ the verdict is predetermined; the ‘evidence’ is… well, whatever serves the purpose. In the ever-hostile eyes of Israel-bashers – be they ‘academic’ or ‘charitable’ – the Jewish state is guilty unless proven innocent. And how can it ever be innocent?”

If the diagnosis above needed to be proven once more, Mr. Moodey’s comments have just supplied that incontrovertible evidence.

Such ‘principles’ coming from the CEO of a Christian charity are – as an understatement – disappointing.  Politically-incorrect Politics officially boos Mr. Moodey.

Preaching Gospel – or Gossip?

The moniker ‘useful idiots’ was coined decades ago to describe Westerners (writers, journalists, political activists, etc.) duped into supporting the Soviet regime.  As part of Stalin’s tactics, such naïves were typically invited to tour the Soviet Union, to ‘experience’ life under the Communist regime.   Carefully ‘shepherded’ from the shadows, lacking any real knowledge of the political and cultural background of the place, they typically returned to enthusiastically ‘share’ with others their manufactured ‘experiences’ – in effect becoming valuable cogs in the Soviet propaganda machine.  It was only much later that some of them woke up and saw the reality behind the carefully constructed sham.

British writer and Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing was one of them; in her memoirs, she writes about her 1952 visit to ‘the Soviet paradise’:

“I was taken around and shown things as a ‘useful idiot’... that’s what my role was. I can’t understand why I was so gullible.”

Hamas is listed by the EU as a terrorist organisation.
But some Europeans are not beyond posing
for propaganda pictures with Hamas leaders.

The Soviet Union is long gone to history's rubbish bin; but the ranks of the gullible are never depleted, nor are the ranks of those willing to use them.  In the Middle East (an area rich not just in oil, but also in dictators badly in need of some ‘good PR’), the practice has been honed to a fine art.  The gullible are employed (usually at their own expense!) to report about ‘experiences’ ranging from ‘improvement in the situation of Saudi women’ to ‘Palestinian non-violent resistance’.

Those “taken around and shown things” include, for instance, members of an outfit called the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine & Israel (EAPPI).  According to its website, the organisation “brings internationals to the West Bank to experience life under occupation” and “provide protective presence to vulnerable communities” (which in practice means “to the Palestinians”; Israelis are usually not worthy of ‘protective presence’ or indeed solace; not even when they are innocent victims of despicable terrorism in the very area in which EAPPI operates).

But the EAPPI activists’ role is not just to ‘experience’ and ‘protect’; upon their return home, they are supposed to“campaign for a just and peaceful resolution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict through an end to the occupation”. After witnessing such ‘campaigning’, the Board of Deputies of British Jews stated:

“… whilst EAPPI's aims may appear admirable, its programme lacks any kind of balance and shows nothing of the context of a hugely complex situation. Unsurprisingly its graduates return with simplistic and radical perspectives, giving talks against Israel which do nothing to promote an understanding of the situation in the Middle East, much less promote a peaceful and viable solution to its problems. Members of Jewish communities across the country have suffered harassment and abuse at EAPPI meetings …”

If one needs evidence that the Board was right, suffice to pore a bit over ‘testimonies’ provided ‘from the field’ by some EAPPI’s activists.   Which, apparently, is situated in the 'Occupied Palestinian Territories'.

Resin cast of a piece of pottery inscribed in ancient Hebrew.

Found in the ruins of "the historic Jewish city of Samaria".

Which, apparently, is part of the 'Occupied Palestinian Territories'.

In his ‘West Bank diary’, one such activist describes his visit to the village of Sebastiya.  The account starts on a lyrical note, with descriptions of the “green ploughed fields of Sebastiya”, which remind him of his native Dorset (needless to say, it did not occur to this activist to question how “green ploughed fields” in arid Middle East square up with Palestinian complaints about the chronic lack of water imposed by the nasty Israelis).  The lyrical part continues with a guidebook-like description of the “impressive set of ruins and buildings, including some from the historic Jewish city of Samaria”, as well as “the tomb of John the Baptist, which sits next to a Mosque in the village centre”.

But the idyllic descriptions soon give way to the latest evil deed perpetrated against peaceful Palestinians by the nasty Israeli settlement of Shavei Shomron.  Of course, it does not occur to the EAPPI activist to ponder whether there might be a grain of legitimacy for a Jewish ‘settlement’ whose name translates as ‘Back to Samaria’ at the site of “the historic Jewish city of Samaria”.  Instead, he describes it as “built on land occupied in 1977 by the messianic Jewish movement Gush Emunium [sic!]” which “believe[s] that Israeli victory in the 1967 war was a sign of divine redemption.” He goes on to describe how these nasty messianic Jews pump what “is believed” to be “industrial sewage” unto “the Olive Groves of Sebastiya” (yes, with capital letters!)

Up to this point, there’s nothing extraordinary in all this: Western ‘pro-Palestinian’ activists often parrot such accusations made by their Palestinian ‘guides’, with no attempt whatsoever to verify the facts. But mere gullibility becomes outright silliness when the author of the ‘diary’ informs his readers that

“Around 600 dunumns [sic!] (square kilometres) of land are estimated by local farmers to be affected by the leak”.

Now, admittedly not everyone knows what a dunum is (it’s an Ottoman unit of area equal to one thousandth of a square kilometre; not one square kilometre!).  But anyone endowed with intelligence, critical thinking and even minimal understanding of the place he’s come to ‘experience’ may want to question how one sewage pipe can pollute 600 square kilometres of land – i.e. an area equal to about 11% of the entire West Bank!  And that, AFTER one has decided that the “local farmers” are indeed who they claim to be, that they tell the truth and that they have the expertise needed to “estimate” such matters. Needless to say, the EAPPI activist makes absolutely no attempt to ‘hear the other side of the story’ – in other words to ask the ‘settlers’ accused of such gargantuan crime what they might have to say in their defence.  (I do hope that this EAPPI chap never gets drawn to jury duty!)

But wait, that’s not the entire extent of the nasty settlers’ crimes.  Because, according to “local farmer Ahmed Kayed”

“Pigs are also released on a regular basis from the settlement into his fields, causing damage.”

Really?  Observant Jews, who believe in ‘signs of divine redemptions,’ grow pigs??  I have to say that – despite everything – I’m growing a bit fond of “local farmer Ahmed Kayed”.  I mean, let’s face it, he at least shows spirit: being employed to ‘guide’ Western ‘useful idiots’ towards the ‘right conclusions’ must, after a while, become quite a boring job; why not play a good prank or two, to see how far Western credulity can really be stretched?  If nothing else, it helps pass the time and gives a man something (someone?) to laugh about with his friends in the evening, over a cup of tea and a hookah.

One of the pigs released from the Israeli settlement.

 According to 'local farmers', they (the pigs, not the farmers!) are
genetically engineered for maximum damage to Palestinian crops.

Leaving aside Mr. Kayed’s private entertainment – delightful as it must have been – the fact that his story was ‘bought’ is rather sad.  Sure, not everyone is familiar with even the most basic tenets of Judaism; but shouldn’t individuals sent to the region in order to ‘experience’ and ‘protect’ – let alone ‘campaign’ and pass judgments – be equipped with an ounce of knowledge of the customs and beliefs of the populations involved?  And failing that – what happened to good ol’ Google?  Was he unwell that day?  And – seriously now – shouldn’t the EAPPI activist have given the accused 'settlers' the elementary right of speaking in their defence, before trumpeting the accusation as fact to the entire world?  Isn’t that an essential principle of the ‘justice’ he claims to serve?  Had he asked them, he would have discovered that anything to do with pigs is just as repugnant to Aharon Kahn as it must be to Ahmed Kayed!

In case EAPPI activists have not noticed, there’s a rather bitter conflict going on in the region they clumsily meddle in.  Bitter enough for people to be ready to kill, let alone lie.  So why should Palestinian accusations be taken at face value and a judgement pronounced without hearing ‘the defence’??  Is there some ‘international law’ that proclaims that Palestinians never lie?  Had the UN issued any Resolution in that respect?  I have to confess that I rather lost track of ‘United’ Nations Resolutions – after all the ‘well-oiled’ (ahem!) Arab voting machine has produced more Resolutions condemning Israel than those condemning gender apartheid-Saudi Arabia, labour-camp-North Korea and top-executioner-Iran taken together.  But, even if such Resolution had been issued, a prudent EAPPI activist would still do well to check the facts.  Who knows?  In the end, as we've seen with Iran’s nuclear programme, such Resolutions are sometimes negotiated away in some sort of ‘agreement’, some  ‘diplomatic solution’ which renders those capital-letter Resolutions just as ineffective as my own low-case New Year resolutions!

Now, I generally see credulity as a mark of innocence.  But when it is employed to slander an entire people and call for their persecution, I think it takes on an altogether more sinister meaning.


And then there are those who just repeat the slanders, with no attempt whatsoever to verify their veracity.  Take for instance a certain J. Moodey, who heads a Christian charity with activities in the Middle East.  In his blog (published on the charity’s official website!), Mr. Moodey makes similar allegations of Israeli misconduct, before ‘informing’ his readers that

“Another Palestinian community affected by settler pollution is the town of Sebastiya, to the north-west of Nablus. A recent article by a participant in the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) reported that pollution from three factories in the nearby settlement of Shavei Shomron, producing aluminium, leather and plastics, were producing a ‘noxious’ grey liquid which was leaking onto some 600 square kilometres of local Palestinian farming land”.

As ‘evidence’, Mr. Moodey provides a link to the ‘West Bank diary’ discussed above

Now, Mr. Moodey is an ex-banker (with Rotschild!); as such (and as head of a charity handling millions of pounds of donors’ money) one must assume that he is quite proficient with numbers and would never – for instance – write 600 million on a cheque, instead of 600 thousand.  And yet, this is exactly the magnitude of the error made here: 600 square kilometres are 1,000 times more than 600 dunums.  And –  to eliminate any possible confusion from his readers’ minds I guess – Mr. Moodey got rid of the “dunumns” in the original ‘diary’ and left just the square kilometres.  Which publicly accuses the inhabitants of this particular ‘settlement’ of having polluted an area almost twice the size of the Isle of Wight!!  I am sure those inhabitants are anxiously waiting for Mr. Moodey's public apology, which – if honestly delivered with the intention of even partially repairing the damage – should underline the magnitude of the error and the fact that he had made no effort to verify the allegation before publicising it in the name of his organisation!

The Bible teaches

“You shall not spread a false report.”  (Exodus 23:1)

But hey – I guess for certain 'Christians' this injunction from the Je… er… the Zionist Bible is just another piece of propaganda meant to stifle debate of those terrible crimes committed by the Zionist entity.