“This is not prison; this is a genocide,” stated an audience member following August 29 movie screenings concerning the Gaza Strip at the Washington, DC office of the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL). Typifying the Israel-hating audience of about 25 that filled FCNL’s small Capitol Hill presentation room, this woman’s comments demonstrated how Quakers at FCNL and beyond have joined the global demonization of Israel.
The woman, a self-professed member of the radical anti-Israel organization Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), “was totally sickened” by the evening’s viewings of Gaza in Context and Gaza: A Gaping Wound. These two films formed the latest presentation of Voices from the Holy Land (VFHL), a Washington, DC-area film club that unites local members of Israel’s enemies such as JVP and is well-known to this author. Gaza’s ruling Hamas terrorists could not have been more pleased with VFHL’s pseudo-documentaries depicting victimized Palestinians and fiendish Zionists, as the JVP woman declared, “I just want to stand up and salute every Palestinian.”
Such bias belied the supposed objectivity of the evening’s introduction by VFHL’s Deepak Kenkeremath, a member of Manassas Presbyterian Church in Virginia. The “mainstream media” discusses Gaza in terms of “words and phrases like terrorists, and Hamas, and rockets, and suicide bombers, and Israeli Defense Forces,” he stated. Somehow the evening’s agitprop sought to expose a deeper, hidden truth behind the clear meaning of these plain words, and give “context for understanding what is going on in Gaza right now.”
Similarly, in his post-screening discussion of his recent charity trip to Gaza to perform surgery, VFHL’s James Cobey, an orthopedic surgeon and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, engaged in moral inversion of Hamas aggressors and Israeli defenders. The JVP woman’s comments followed Cobey’s remark that omnipresent Israeli drones overflying Gaza meant that there “everybody feels they are imprisoned.” Accordingly, he claimed that in Gaza the “reason the Palestinians shoot these rockets, which aren’t very powerful, is because they are frustrated,” not because of Hamas’ jihad ideology.
The considerable dangers of Hamas rockets, as well as terror tunnels and more recently fire kites, must cause considerable loss of sleep among Israelis. Yet Cobey focused not on their necessity to quickly take cover in bomb shelters, but on Gaza’s rest needs. He stated that the night before he left Gaza, the Israeli Air Force dropped 90 bombs in six hours, and complained that “it is hard to sleep with bombs all night long.”
Cobey’s fellow Episcopalian and VFHL member Tom Getman demonstrated once again how his antisemitism was a primary factor in turning the Christian aid agency World Vision International against Israel. He has previously ranted this year before an anti-Israel conference audience (including this author) about Zionism’s “genocidist” God. His writings for the George Soros-funded Sojourners magazine have slanderously described the Old Testament Canaanite god of child sacrifice, Moloch, as an “angry Israeli god.” As Dexter van Zile from the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) has documented, with Getman et al leading, “World Vision’s behavior is, simply put, scandalous” towards Israel.
Getman at FCNL noted that he “worked five years in Palestine” for World Vision’s Jerusalem, West Bank, and Gaza operations. His comments evoked those of the Massachusetts Episcopal Bishop Gayle Harris, who recently apologized for fabricating Israeli atrocity stories. He described an Israeli military that willfully attacked humanitarian Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) like World Vision, as if the standard human shield tactics of jihadists such as Hamas did not encompass NGOs.
Contrary to the Israeli military’s documented high ethical standards, Getman claimed to have once stood near Red Cross tents at a Gaza intersection
with my flak jacket on, clearly marked as an NGO. The men on either side of me were shot, one right here in the forehead, and the other with a graze wound. I could hear no sound of the shot; it was from 1,500 meters from across the barrier, across the fence. That happens every day, not just what you are seeing, even when we would call regularly the coordinates of our projects….I came to believe that when we called in coordinates, they added us to their list, and that to me shows the kind of evil we are facing, and how we must mobilize in ways that I think we haven’t even begun to comprehend.
Corresponding to Getman’s comments, much of the post-screening discussion concerned political advocacy against Israel. VFHL member Thomas Johnson mentioned the Washington, DC Episcopal Diocese Companion Diocesan Committee—Jerusalem, where he collaborates with both Cobey and Getman. Getman emphasized the importance of weaning Christian Zionists away from Israel. “We have many former Christian Zionist friends, inadvertent Zionist friends who, when they have got the kind of picture we got today, will come over to the winning side,” he said.
Cobey, meanwhile, praised President Barack Obama’s 2009 Cairo speech, with its politically correct pieties about Islam, as “fantastic.” Cobey said that some saw in Obama a coming “great change in the relationship to Israel after that, but he backed off, he was told to stop, he wouldn’t be reelected.” Cobey hoped that the former president freed from reelection concerns could be a “great speaker” on Israel.
Similar sentiments came from the evening’s hosts, FCNL Legislative Director for Middle East Policy Kate Gould, and FCNL Quaker Field Secretary Christine Ashley. The Iran nuclear deal promoter Gould noted people such as Hillary Clinton “who have supported past attacks on Gaza, even those who we may not think of as natural allies on this issue.” They have “frustration and anger about the continuation of the ‘occupation’” by Israel over Palestinians, and therefore there are politically “really some new opportunities.”
Gould said that politicians are “hearing certainly from those who want to see more bombs and they are saying we don’t hear enough from people who support human rights.” Her ideas of human rights supporters such as the Virginia Coalition for Human Rights (VCHR) were rather curious. This local group contains members of organizations supporting the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel, such as JVP and the Hamas-derived American Muslims for Palestine (AMP).
The evening’s affiliations with BDS supporters such as VFHL rendered hollow FCNL’s official online statement that FCNL members “do not take a position on BDS.” Meanwhile, the Quaker church has divested from companies doing business with Israel. Israel has also listed the Quakers’ American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) among 20 organizations such as JVP that are banned from entering Israel due to BDS support, as a result of the AFSC’s longstanding anti-Israel animus.
Most Jews would not have appreciated the event’s seething contempt against Israel and the discovery that FCNL is no friend of the Jewish state. Yet Ashley tried to end the evening on a note of John Lennon-like happy multicultural platitudes. She blithely quoted from the Quaker writer Parker J. Palmer, who apparently has never studied Islamic supremacist doctrines like jihad.
Palmer had stated that
all the great spiritual traditions when you boil them down, are saying one simple thing, be not afraid…you don’t have to be your fears, and you don’t have to create a world in which those fears dominate the conditions of many, many people.
Many should fear the FCNL’s warped views.
Terry Gain says
Israel is clearly not allowed to defend itself according to these morally depraved dupes. Anyone who, post Holocaust, does not support the right of the Jewish people to live in peace in their ancestral homelands is morally depraved.
As for Obama’s Cairo speech, it was as sickening as it was frightening. ” the holy Koran teaches us … ( to kill for Allah).
mortimer says
This VICTIMOLOGY hunt loses sight of the fact that real victims don’t not militarily assault their opponents, but call the police to do so. In 1948, Israel was attacked by 9 Arab countries and was again attacked in 1967 by a number of Arab countries. Who was the victim then? Israel was created as a Jewish homeland just as many other small countries have been created in the 20th century as nation-homelands, especially after WWI.
Israel has respected international laws in the matter of the disputed territories. These disputed territories of Gaza and Judea are part of the original mandate set up in 1922. How can a Jewish homeland not have Judea as part of it? How indeed?
Let’s closely examine the Arab perspective, rather than the Jewish one, regarding Jordan and Palestine.
“Palestine and Jordan are one…” said King Abdullah in 1948.
“The truth is that Jordan is Palestine and Palestine is Jordan,” said King Hussein of Jordan, in 1981.
“Palestine is Jordan and Jordan is Palestine; there is only one land, with one history and one and the same fate,” Prince Hassan of the Jordanian National Assembly was quoted as saying on February 2, 1970.
Accordingly, Abdul Hamid Sharif, Prime Minister of Jordan declared, in 1980, “The Palestinians and Jordanians do not belong to different nationalities. They hold the same Jordanian passports, are Arabs and have the same Jordanian culture.”
In other words, Jordan is Palestine. Arab Palestine. There is absolutely no difference between Jordan and Palestine, nor between Jordanians and Palestinians (all actually Arabs).
Distinguished Arab-American Princeton University historian Philip Hitti testified before the Anglo-American Committee, “There is no such thing as ‘Palestine’ in history.”
According to Arab-American columnist Joseph Farah,
“Palestine has never existed – before or since – as an autonomous entity. It was ruled alternately by Rome, by Islamic and Christian crusaders, by the Ottoman Empire, and briefly by the British after World War I. The British agreed to restore at least part of the land to the Jewish people as their homeland. There was no language known as Palestinian. There was no distinct Palestinian culture. There has never been a Palestine governed by the Palestinians. Palestinians are Arabs, indistinguishable from Jordanians (another recent invention), Syrians, Lebanese, Iraqis, etc.”
* Approximately half of Jordan’s prime ministers since 1950 have been Arab ‘Palestinians’.
* More than 2/3 of the Jordanian people are Arab ‘Palestinians’.
* The majority of citizens residing in the capital of Amman are Arab ‘Palestinians’.
* Arab ‘Palestinians’ constitute not less than one half of the members of the armed forces, according to the late King Hussein, as broadcast on Amman Radio February 3, 1973.
* The majority of other security forces are Arab ‘Palestinians’.
* Jordan occupies 77% of the original Palestine Mandate (originally promised to the Jewish people). The population density of Jordan is less than 61 people per square mile leaving lots of room to absorb many more of their brethren and cousins.
The two-state solution has been in place for a long time: an Arab section of the original Mandate (77% = Jordan) and a Jewish homeland left from the of the original Mandate (23% = Israel).
From 100% of the Palestine Mandate to less than one quarter, the Jewish homeland shrank dramatically, but why should we listen to those who want the Jewish homeland to shrink to 0% ? Are they nuts? Or simply very dishonest about their genocidal intentions? Unlike Jordan, Israel has not been expansionist.
ben t says
FROM PERSONAL EXPERIENCE, I can testify that the “American Friends Committees” are Communist and/or leftist orgs . I, personally, worked with them for two years in my DOPEY years.
gravenimage says
Thanks for the background.
I respected the Quaker’s opposition to slavery, but that was over a century and a half ago…
FYI says
Does the JVP {the Jewish Voice for Peace} not know about
SAHIH MUSLIM 6985:
The islamic teaching that calls for a GENOCIDAL war of annihilation against the Jews ?
If you want Genocide ..read:
SAHIH MUSLIM 6985.
islam’s great FUTURE plan for the Jews..
“The last hour would not come until the muslims will fight AGAINST the Jews and the muslims would KILL THEM until the Jews would hide…………,there is a Jew behind thee…KILL him”.
Could it be any clearer?If you are Jewish, does this not remind you of something that happened before?What will you do?Blame JW??
Would they prefer not to know about SAHIH MUSLIM 6985?
Does such a GENOCIDAL teaching upset the leftie liberals,snowflakes and morally blind virtue-signalling hypocrites who pretend to be so upset about the “palestinians”?
Will the JVP,the SPLC,the ADL be taking note of SAHIH MUSLIM 6985.. or will they simply
choose to ignore it?Perhaps try to shut down JW for telling the truth that the leftie liberals and the media and the politicians prefer people don’t know?
{This is what motivates isis:they believe this is the last hour and in this last hour it is their allah-given duty to wipe out Jews{and Christians}:”in the last hour the muslims will fight against the Jews”}
Can the SPLC,ADL,JVP,FCNL etc NOT see that??
Did they miss that?I am “totally sickened” by the sheer hypocrisy of these self-righteous,virtue-signalling,leftie liberal groups with their wilful ignorance of reality and who choose to DENY the fact that it is islam that plans for a Genocidal war against the Jews and the destruction of Israel.
Israel has the right to exist and the right to defend itself.
Israel has a God-given{…not “allah”! given…}right to protect its own borders as any competent military,in any nation on earth would do.It would be a gross dereliction of duty for the army of a nation to fail to protect its own citizens.
The re-establishment of Israel by official command of the Actual God is confirmed by Biblical prophecies in the OT.see Book of Joel 3 for starters.
Of course asking episcopalians,with their warped,naive,simple-minded, leftie liberal dhimmiwit christianity and their watered-down, suit yourself,Gospel of Wishful Thinking or asking quakers{of my personal experience}to take time off from their worldly business enterprises,to take time out to actually READ the scripture and actually follow it,is probably too much to expect.{If you think you are saved BTW see Matthew 7 v 21-23;how sure are you?can you see yourself passing that test?How many episcopalians or quakers or catholics ..will get past ?most certainly,”christian”
you are not doing the will of the father are you?..which would require 100% dedication,perhaps physical martyrdom and most christians don’t ..which is WHY Jesus Says in Matthew 7 v 4 that “there are FEW people” who find the path.FEW!And yet in all these churchs they are convinced,through wishful thinking ,that they have bought a guaranteed salvation ticket!They haven’t!}}
Interesting fact:the Biblical prophecies concerning Israel are in the Bible of course.
but “allah” in the koran claims to be the author of.. the Bible{koran 3:3}.
allah also tells muhammed,if in doubt koran 10:94..to read the Bible.
So,muslims and “palestinians” cannot deny the right of Israel to exist…
since allah claims to have written the..Bible.
The “palestinians” are made-up:Israel,however is legitimate.
Dhimmiwit Jews and Christians apparently don’t get that.
Cicero says
I am not surprised that one person called by the name Deepak Kenkeremath of the Manasseh Presbyterian Church is espousing anti Semitic sentiments. Deepak appears to be a convert and product of the Christian Evangelical Conversion process in India.
If one attends any Indian church services in India or elsewhere one would be astonished at the pro Palestine and anti Jewish bias in the priest’s sermons. The gullible Indian flocks just soak up such sly and hateful propanda against the Jewish people.
Elisha says
Not every Indian preacher is like this. Brother Zac Poonen is a true man of God! I doubt there is a more Spirit filled humble servant of Jesus Christ than him. Look up CFC Bangalore.
Carol the 1st says
Sounds like political rats are deliberately setting things roiling. Some Indians posting here have expressed deep resentment of Christian evangelizing efforts in India (which bear little resemblance to Christianity as we in the West more untaintedly experience it). To hear now of pro Palestine and anti-Jewish bias in sermons seems to confirm my guess as to who is likely in there stirring up and making use of this evil concoction. And it is a CONCOCTION.
gravenimage says
Actually, antisemitism is quite uncommon in India.
Peter Buckley says
“Genocide”. Hilarious.
All you need are the FACTS to show idiots up. The population of Palestine has increased EIGHT FOLD since 1947.
http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=386989
So this idiot, and any other idiot who witters on about “Genocide”, should be asked: “If this is a “genocide”- can you explain to everyone how the population has increased so much? The idea of a “genocide” is to REDUCE the population. So why do you pretend it is the opposite? Also, if this is, as you bizarrely claim, a “genocide”, then you would have to concur that the state of Israel must be the WORST exponents of “genocide” in the history of mankind, as the result of the “genocide” seems to have the opposite outcome to the one intended. I look forward to your explanation…………”
That’s how you talk to these clowns. You humiliate them with the facts. Simples………..
Martin says
“’Genocide’. Hilarious.
All you need are the FACTS to show idiots up. The population of Palestine has increased EIGHT FOLD since 1947.”
Genocide, Population Explosion, it’s the same when you’re a fool or an Arab stooge.
dsinc says
Yes, also, where have all these “genocide” victims been buried?
gravenimage says
Very true, Peter.
Westman says
Isn’t it strange that the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) never asks themselves why, of 380,000 worldwide Quakers, only 70 live in the Middle East?
George Orwell seems prescient in how doublespeak has subsumed reality.
I wonder what Mary Dyer, of the Four Martyrs(hung for religious belief by Massachusetts Puritans), would have thought about modern Quakers making a mockery of her sacrifice by embracing a religious philosophy that ultimately calls for their death or forced conversion over one that allows all civil and religious freedoms?
Kepha says
This is why a part of me cheers for the Massachusetts Puritans (not just because I also identify with the Reformed tradition)–at least to the point of the ducking stool, pillory, and flogging the ranters out of town at the cart’s tail, if not hanging. It seems that when QUakers try to “speak truth to power”, it’s usually for some very bloody-minded and incorrigibly illiberal (“liberal” being taken as respect for liberty) movement such as Communism (back when I was young) or, nowadays, Islam. The Quakier “inner light” seems to be chiefly a very emotional reaction to sympathize with whoever starts kvetching first.
I’ll add that while I’m not sure I’ve ever met a cradle Mennonite whom I did not like (at least as a person), there are lots of Quakers I’ve run into who struck me as unctuous and smarmy.
Now, it is true that a lot of missions groups (and not just the Leftist, “social gospel” kind) who’ve got a footprint in the area have noticed that rough treatment meted out to the Falastin Arabs. But it is probably to be expected when the Palestinian champions have very few qualms about killing and maiming kids in a pizza parlor, or very small children in their beds. It seems that when a Palestinian “child” is killed, it’s usually because he was busy throwing rocks or worse; or even because some adult convinced him to become a “martyr” by strapping on a suicide vest.
gravenimage says
I don’t believe that anyone has the right to torture, flog, or hang people for their religious beliefs, Kepha–even stupid beliefs. Pious Muslims certainly believe they have the right to do this, though.
And–as I noted elsewhere–the Quakers were right about slavery. But they could not be more wrong in supporting murderous thugs against the civilized Israelis, though.
Martin says
“This is not prison; this is a genocide,” stated an audience member following August 29 movie screenings concerning the Gaza Strip…”
The audience member clearly does not know the meaning of the word genocide. For there to be a genocide a group’s population has to be radically diminishing through the actions of another group. The Arabs in Gaza are breeding so fast that they are creating their own population bomb that’ll bring ruin upon themselves. As long as the west continues to feed the ten children of Gazan beggars this situation will only get worse. Genocide, real genocide, is what happened to the Jews under Hitler and to the Christian Armenians under the Muslim Turks; the population explosion in Gaza is not Jewish caused Arab genocide, to think otherwise it to prove yourself a fool.
Hugh Fitzgerald says
It is misleading to call Dr. James Cobey a 1997 Nobel Peace Laureate. He was (and presumably still is) a member of Physicians for Human Rights, one of dozens of groups, each group in turn with hundreds or even thousands of members, that made up the consortium, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. It was the ICBL that was awarded the prize.
He is, then, one of many thousands of people who could misleadingly be described as 1997 Nobel Peace Laureates. Only one person was singled out — Jody Williams, the founder of the campaign.
When the International Red Cross received the Nobel Peace Prize, would we then have called an individual member of a local chapter — one of tens of thousands — a Nobel Peace laureate? No.
Rarely says
The population of Gaza has doubled since Israel gave up occupation.
jewdog says
If the Quakers were sincere, they would focus on China and Syria.
The Istanbulian says
They quake at the thought of retaliation
James Lincoln says
Perhaps someone else can express this more eloquently than I, but here goes:
Otherwise intelligent people need to learn the process of conducting due diligence in order to be able to find the truth in a world filled with deliberate, purposefully misleading propaganda.
roger standen says
Perfectly expressed
Elisha says
Sir William Ramsay conducted his research with great diligence. Do you have the same courage and humility? Psalm 145:18.
Hari Singh says
Authentic Quakers are hard to find. All too often the denomination’s properties have been taken over by pseudo leftist Quakers who use the reputation of the Quakers to push a Marxist agenda. This is just phase three of world historical antisemitism.
Phase one-Hate Jews for rejecting and killing Christ [Apostles and Nicene Creeds say it was Pontius Pilate by the way] Actually Jews and Christians are one faith they use the same Hebrew bible, just interpert it differently.
Phase Two -Hate the Jews for the ”Race” Anyone who has been to Israel knows there is no Jewish race as the word is ordinarily understood.
Phase Three Hate the Jews for trying to protect themselves with a nation-state.
All phases have the commonality of calling for the destruction of the Jews.
Israel’s fight against Jihad protects the world, Israel is the front line against Jihad.
Elisha says
John 14:6.
Lydia Church says
“Sojourners magazine have slanderously described the Old Testament Canaanite god of child sacrifice, Moloch, as an “angry Israeli god.” ”
Nothing could be more ridiculous! It is the God of Israel that had Israel go in and slay the people living in the land of Israel BEFORE the people of Israel (Jews) entered the land (Canaan aka Palestine), BECAUSE the “palestinians” or ‘Canaanites” were the ones sacrificing their babies to Moloch! He was not an ‘Israeli’ god of the Jews, but a Canaanite god! That is what made the true God of the Jews (the Biblical God) angry, and rightly so! If you sacrifice your baby at all, you deserve death! And they sacrificed the babies to demonic spirits called ‘gods.’
All of these details in the article just go to show how the church at large has fallen into apostasy!
Beware lest you go to church and get swallowed up by the apostate vortex too!
s says
the Quakers and Quaker Schools are synonymous with far left ideology and America hatred… our local; leader of the occupy movement taught school kids how to become organizers and riot and an assortment of other Alinsky and Communist tactics… such a special group of anti-Americans…. they should be refused tax monies..
gravenimage says
Quaker Event Promotes Blood Libels Against Israel
……………….
Just shameful calumny against civilized Israel.
And Gaza is no “prison”–Israel does not even have a presence in Gaza anymore, and has not for well over a decade now.
Linda Clark says
A QUAKER? She assumes Muslims want Jews to survive. Just another goof ball who hasn’t taken the time to read Quran.