Those Who Deny the Holocaust in Gaza are No Different to those Who Deny
the Nazi Holocaust
The truth
about the British Empire and slavery: Mehdi Hasan and Nigel Biggar | Head to
Head
I first came across Tory Peer and author of In Defence of War, the Revd. Lord
Biggar, when a friend, Adam Waterhouse, sent me a link to an article he had written.
Adam’s article was in response to an article Biggar had written, Israel’s acts are not
‘genocidal.’ Biggar had been replying to an article by the Archbishop of York,
Stephen Cottrell which spoke of Israel’s actions in Gaza as ‘genocidal acts’.
The Archbishop had visited the West Bank and he was quoted
as saying that after his visit the previous week “It gives me no joy whatsoever to use these words,” but that he had
been left wondering, “What other words do
you use” to describe the situation in the West Bank?
What’s
happening in the West Bank is not what happened in South Africa, but
you’re left thinking: what other language do I use to describe such a two-tier
system, where one group of people is so persistently and systematically denied
their human rights
and having to live a parallel life? What is happening is deliberate and
systematic, persistent, and intentional, and its impact is devastating.
You may wonder why Nigel Biggar even felt the need to
respond to the Archbishop’s mild words. We have the horrors of Gaza: the
starvation of children, the bombing of hospitals and schools, the Flour Massacre and the shooting of people collecting food, the mass murder
of innocent civilians and the genocidal statements of Israeli leaders, to say
nothing of the open apartheid in the West Bank, yet the only thing that aroused the ire of our Professor of Morality was the description of what is happening in Gaza 'Genocide'.
Israeli officials' rhetoric fuelling Gaza genocide through
dehumanisation and incitement: B’Tselem
One can only assume that Biggar was doing his best
to prevent any expression of solidarity by the Church of England with the Palestinians
of Gaza. Not that there had been much anyway. Until he resigned for his role
in covering up child abuse in the Church of England, Archbishop of Canterbury
Justin Welby had not only refused to condemn the genocide but had all
but supported it.
Biggar is not a
historian but an academic engaged in historical revisionism and moral
relativism. He is no different from those who downplay the magnitude of the
Nazi holocaust.
Although Biggar
dresses up his arguments in the clothes of moral theology his mission is
political, the rehabilitation of the reputation of the British Empire and its
offspring, Israel.
That is why he defends
the actions of Israel and minimises the genocide in Gaza. In this he is given
enthusiastic support
by the same Tory press which turned a blind eye to Hitler's anti-Semitism in the 30s.
Zionism was the
product of the late colonial era. He could hardly exculpate British colonialism
whilst condemning its bastard child, Israel. That is the impulse which drives Biggar
and he is not averse to resorting to every verbal and rhetorical trick in
pursuit of that goal even if he plays fast and loose with facts.
The reason why I have penned an Open Letter to
Biggar is two fold. Firstly Adam Waterhouse was too polite by half when
tackling as devious and dishonest a character as Biggar. Politeness is not one
of my faults!
Secondly there are many questions that Adam did not ask
concerning Biggar’s motive in writing his turgid essay.
You are the Regius Professor Emeritus of Moral and Pastoral
Theology. It is a grand title for such an immoral, (or is
it amoral?) man. You are the
King’s Professor no less.
I puzzle over what kind of morality and theology leads
a person to deny that a genocide is taking place when the evidence to the
contrary is so overwhelming?
You state,
in the Church Times of 28 November 2025, that Israel’s acts are not ‘genocidal’ in response to the
Archbishop of York’s declaration
that Israel is committing ‘genocidal acts’.
Israel bombs
school in Gaza killing children and parents under the pretext that they were
Hamas
By the most conservative estimate, when your
article appeared, 70,100 people had
been murdered by Israel in Gaza yet you reduce it to 44,000. Why?
According to a
study published in The Lancet, some
83,000 had died by January 2025. If this is true then over 118,000 had died by
the time your article appeared.
According to Stuart Casey Maslen, head of the
Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, Gaza’s
population had
declined by more than 10%, which would suggest roughly 200,000 people had
died by February 2026.
In your article
you do your best to minimise the number of dead. Morally you are no different
from deniers of the Nazi holocaust who also did their best to minimise the number of those killed. You say that ‘the large number of civilian casualties alone — maybe around 44,000 —
is not sufficient evidence’ of genocide. Is this what the morality of
pastoral Christian theology amounts to?
The definition
of genocide owes nothing to numbers. The death of 8,000 at Srbenica was held
to be a genocide. ‘Genocide’ refers to the intent to destroy, in whole or
in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. The question is
whether Israel had the necessary intent and did it commit any of the acts that
constitute genocide, viz.
ØKilling
members of or Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
ØDeliberately
inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its
physical destruction, in whole or in part
ØImposing
measures intended to prevent births within the group
ØForcibly
transferring children of the group to another group
Apart from
the last category it is clear that the acts of the Israeli state are clearly
acts of genocide. It is also clear that you have no expertise in genocide,
history or any relevant academic discipline.
Raz Segal, an Israeli and Associate Professor of Holocaust
and Genocide Studies does have that expertise. Segal wrote:
Israelis
are explicit and unashamed about their genocidal intent because they have
imagined and prosecuted a war against people who they see as colonised
“savages”.
A survey by
Professor Tamir Sorek of Pennsylvania State University showed that 82% of Israeli
Jews supported the expulsion of the Palestinians of Gaza and 47% agreed that
when conquering an enemy city, the Israel Defense
Forces should act as the Israelites did in Jericho under Joshua's command –
killing all its inhabitants.
56% supported the expulsion of
Palestinian citizens of Israel. The statements of intent to commit genocide by Israel's leaders are too many to count.
You question
why Archbishop Cottrell ‘thinks that his view should carry
weight’ when he ‘is an expert neither in the ethics of war nor in Middle
Eastern affairs’. But this applies even more so to you, the author of a book In Defence of War?
You
also criticise
the Genocide Convention because it ‘fails to distinguish the morally different
ways in which a people can be “destroyed”.’ For most people there is nothing
moral in destroying a people.
You compare
the Allies killing of thousands of French and Italian civilians in the fight
against the Nazis with Israel’s ‘war against Hamas’. But there is no comparison.
Hamas is a resistance organisation waging a guerrilla war against the world’s fourth
most powerful army. The Nazis had an army consisting of armed soldiers complete with tanks and aircraft. So too does Israel. It is the IDF not
Hamas which is comparable to the Nazis.
It is also noticeable
that you avoid mentioning the word ‘Palestinians’. To you they are ‘Arabs’.
This too is part of a genocidal mentality whereby indigenous people are invisible.
What is clear
is that your morality is not politically neutral. You say that
THERE is no doubt that Hamas intended to kill
indiscriminately on 7 October 2023, because we know that they deliberately
hunted down the old, the young, and the infant.’
Hamas mass rape a ‘hoax’ and ‘fake news’, says University of Sydney
professor
But
there is doubt. Israel has waged a war of atrocity propaganda. The first lies
were the 40
beheaded babies hoax. Then there was the mass rape hoax. Hamas’
principal aim was to capture Israeli hostages in order to exchange them for
Palestinian hostages.
Whereas
you attributed to Hamas the worst of motives, you went out of your way to
excuse the actions of the Israeli army. You wrote that:
In contrast, the fact that the Israeli military
have targeted buildings where they know civilians are present is no proof that
they intend to kill them; for it may be that their intended targets are Hamas
sites, to which, tragically, civilians are located dangerously close.
So
when Israel bombs and attacks hospitals it is because they are Hamas sites? And
ambulances? Universities? What about schools?
How about reservoirs
and water treatment plants? Was Hamas hiding out in them too? How about the
Trades Union Centre?
Are bakeries and kindergartens also Hamas bases.
I
know that you are an expert in moral theology, but that begs the question of whether moral theology is a genuine academic discipline or an invented and imagined subject. It is entirely subjective and without any means of independent verification.
Everything you have said could justify any and everything
that the Nazis did. Your morality seems to depend on which side you take. Are there any universal principles that can be distilled from your writings?
You
say that ‘the Nazi death camps are the
paradigm of genocide’. But are they? One of the main characteristics of
Genocide is that there is no paradigm except perhaps the presence of
colonialism/imperialism/nationalism.
The
death of between 12 and 15 million
Africans as a result of slavery might also be considered paradigmatic but your
main concern when it comes to colonial slavery is to oppose reparations by indulging in whatabouttery in your
book The
Tyranny of Imagined Guilt.
‘Whataboutery seems to me a very fragile ethical
edifice upon which to build an anti-reparative argument.
It
seems that ethics have no place in your moral theology. Lester writes
that you
accuse(s) reparations activists of “the
reckless, dismissive brushing aside of concerns about the truth.” One wonders
if he was looking in the mirror.
For
you there seems to be only one genocide, the Jewish holocaust. Contrary to Zionist
propaganda it was no more unique than any other genocide.
Was
the Genocide
in the Congo where amputations and the skinning alive of the 10 million Africans were perpetrated, less cruel or paradigmatic?
Was
the Herero/Nama
genocide in SW Africa to be disregarded when it was based on the same
principles of racial supremacy and even involved some of the same actors who
perpetrated the Nazi holocaust, such as Eugen Fischer?
The
Nazi genocide of Jews has become an imperialist narrative, shorn of its
political and social roots, as the main rationale
for everything that Israel does. It is no surprise that you do not deploy your ‘moral’
arguments against reparations for slavery against the reparations
that were paid by the Germans to Israel.
I can only
assume that the real reason for your anguish is that as a Christian
Zionist you are prepared to justify any atrocity and any war crime that Israel
commits because without the ‘return’ of the Jews to the Holy Land Christ will
not be returning. In other words the ends justify the means.
When I saw
you in the debate
hosted by Mehdi Hassan you brought to mind Percy Shelley’s Masque of Anarchy,
written in the wake of the massacre at Peterloo in 1819:
I met Murder on
the way—
He had a mask
like Castlereagh -
Very smooth he
looked, yet grim;
Seven
blood-hounds followed him.
You are also the author
of Colonialism: A
Moral Reckoning, which attempts to provide a defence
of the British Empire. In your own words it is ‘Empire
Without Apology’.
Although you conceded in
the debate hosted by Mehdi Hassan that the Empire contained ‘‘elements
of racism’ you see the Empire as not having been ‘essentially racist’. On balance
it was a force for good.
It is no surprise that you were ennobled by Kemi Badenoch
who like most Black people in the Tory Party goes out of her way to prove that
she’s politically White. Badenoch is the Black Face of White Supremacism. It is
no surprise that she has been called
a coconut
by Black anti-racists.
Kenan Malik, in his review
of your book describes how, in 1919, the architect of British support for
Zionism, Foreign Secretary, Arthur James Balfour,
dismissed the idea that the new League of Nations
should adopt a statement about equality, insisting it unimaginable “that a man from central Africa could be
regarded as the equal of a European or an American”
This is the racism that led
to Britain’s support of Zionism.
Your real function as
an academic was to provide the religious and ideological underpinnings for the
new imperialism that we are seeing play out in the wars in the Middle East today.
Your academic discipline, Moral Theology, is little more than a religious
justification of imperialism and its work. It is political chicanery dressed up
in academic jargon.
Virtually every human rights organisation in the world
recognises that what has occurred in Gaza is genocide. Organisations as
disparate as Amnesty
International, Human
Rights Watch, Israel’s B’tselem
and the UN’s own Commission of Inquiry. The Association of Genocide Scholars voted
by 86% to describe what was happening in Gaza as a genocide.
Perhaps you would like to inform people just what your own
qualifications are that enables you to contradict not only every human rights
organisation but the testimony of doctors like Dr Mark Perlmutter. In an interview
Perlmutter described how, when volunteering at the European
hospital of Khan Younis in southern Gaza he "saw
two children that were shot twice". He added: "No child gets shot twice by mistake."
Virtually every
doctor who has volunteered in Gaza has the same story. Israel is using children
as target practice. Does this not tell you something about what has happened in
Gaza or does your allegiance to the Tory Party and mammon preclude this?
It seems to me that a
far better title for you to use would be the Professor of an Immoral Theology,
not forgetting the Regius bit of course!
The Church of England doesn’t
have a good record when it comes to fighting racism, including anti-Semitism. Cosmo
Gordon Lang, who was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1928 to 1942, suggested
to American diplomat James McDonald shortly before World War II that the Jews
were responsible for their persecution by the Nazis.
Terence
Tastard writes
in his PhD thesis ‘The Response of the
English Churches to the Nazi Persecution of the Jews 1933-1945’ that:
the response
by Church of England leaders during the 1930s was fitful and issue-led. Despite
his sudden eruption over the cartoon [in the Nazi paper Der Sturmer] , Lang had little to say about the situation of the
Jews as the crisis in Germany deepened between 1934 and 1938.
In recent times, with
the exception of Archbishops of Canterbury George Carey and Justin Welby, who both
protected
child-abusers within the Church, senior prelates like Robert Runcie and Rowan
Williams have tended to the more liberal side of politics.
Archbishop Justin Welby
With the advent of Justin Welby
to the Archbishopric of Canterbury things changed. Welby came from a deeply
conservative family. Father Gavin stood for Parliament in the 1951 and 1955
general elections as a Conservative candidate. Welby, educated at Eton and
Trinity College, Cambridge was born to the ruling class.
Welby is the
most reactionary Archbishop of Canterbury since Carey, who was appointed by
Thatcher after his predecessor Robert Runcie had issued Faith in the City, which was ‘an indictment of Thatcher’s free-market policies.’ Almost
immediately Chief Rabbi Jakobovits leapt to her defence with From Doom to Hope, arguing:
blacks should
not look to the state but instead to themselves and take responsibility for
their poverty. He argued that they should learn from the Jewish experience of
working themselves out of poverty, educating themselves and building up a
"trust in and respect for the police, realising that our security as a
minority depended on law and order being maintained
leading
Thatcher to remark
“Oh, how I
wish our own [Anglican] church leaders would take a leaf out of your Chief
Rabbi’s book.”
British Jewish
hostility to socialism did not start with Corbyn!
Thatcher
was known to have protected paedophiles such as her closest aide
Peter Morrison, so Carey was a natural choice for
her.
It is
inconceivable that Welby would author anything but the mildest rebuke of the
government’s political and economic policies. He is a died-in-the-wool
reactionary and so Zionism is second nature.
Welby
worked for 11 years in the oil industry and in 1984 he became treasurer of Enterprise Oil. He also became a member of the
Evangelical Anglican church of Holy Trinity in Brompton, London. He retired in
1989 and suddenly sensed a calling from God.
In July
2013, following a Parliamentary Report on Banking Standards, Welby leapt to the
defence of bankers, warning against punishing by naming and
shaming individual bankers, which he compared to the behaviour of a lynch mob.
It was the behaviour of the bankers which led to the 2008/9 crash which led to over 300,000 deaths from austerity as the poor paid the
price. Welby’s sympathies however were firmly with the bankers not the poor.
Mehdi Hassan on ISIS
and Blowback
Welby also
joined in the state’s Islamaphobia campaign that accompanied the ‘war against
terror’ and the fight against ISIS. In November 2016 he was quoted as saying that
Claims that
the atrocities of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant have “nothing to do with
Islam” are harming efforts to confront and combat extremism.
Isis did
not exist before the US invasion of Iraq destroyed the existing society,
killing a million people in the process. It was a war for oil masquerading as a
war for democracy. By deliberately stoking up sectarian divisions in Iraq, the
old divide and rule, the US created first Al
Quaeda in Iraq and then ISIS. Welby
of course kept silent because, as an oil trader, he benefited from the genocide
in Iraq.
Welby was following in
the footsteps of Carey, a Christian Zionist, in more ways than one. In February
2017, Welby had to apologise after allegations that barrister and evangelical
Christian John Smyth
beat boys in the late 1970s until their wounds bled and left permanent scars.
Smyth was a senior member of Christian charity the Iwerne
Trust in the 1970s and 1980s.
Welby was a
dormitory officer at camps held in the Dorset village of Iwerne Minster. Smyth
was described by Welby in 2017 as "charming" and
"delightful."
They even swapped Christmas cards for some years. Andrew Atherstone in Risk
Taker and Reconciler, described Welby as having been
involved in
the camps as an undergraduate […] businessman and theological college student
in the 1980s and early 1990s.
Welby
stated that "I had no contact with
them at all". It later materialised that Welby had attended the camp in this period and had continued to receive the camp newsletter.
In 2012, a
victim of Smyth reported the abuse to the CoE and Welby was informed in 2013. Welby
maintained that this was the first he had heard
of the abuse by his old friend. The New York Times on 14 October 2017 quoted a senior Church of England figure as
saying that
“all senior
members of the trust, including officers like Archbishop Welby, had been made
aware of the allegations against Mr Smyth, even those who had been
abroad".
Questions
have remained among Smyth victims as to when Welby first knew. Some have
labelled the Archbishop an "observer",
a term denoting a person who knew about abuse but who did not report it.
None of this stopped
Welby, on 30 January 2023 issuing
a statement on Stephen Sizer. Hypocrisy is, after all, the tribute that vice
pays to virtue. Welby pontificated that:
It is clear
that the behaviour of Stephen Sizer has undermined Christian-Jewish relations,
giving encouragement to conspiracy theories and tropes that have no place in
public Christian ministry and the church. I renew my call for the highest
possible standards among ordained ministers of the Church of England in
combatting antisemitism of all kinds.”
UnfortunatelyWelby refused to take his own advice on
‘the highest possible standards’. Despite
multiple
callshe has refused toresign.
The Crucifixion
of Stephen Sizer
From 1997 to 2017 Sizer
was the Vicar of Christ Church, Virginia Water. Stephen was an expert
on Christian Zionism.
Christian Zionism is a
deeply racist, genocidal ideology that justifies the colonisation of Palestine because
god ‘gave it’ to the Jews. It justifies persecution in the name of god. There
is nothing that Jewish settlers or Israel do which it can’t justify in order to
reach End
Times.
Christian Zionism is a
fundamentalist reading of the Bible that ignores context and even Jewish
theology. The idea that colonists have the right to expel an indigenous people
because ‘god’ gave them permission is by definition inherently racist.
God also blessed the American
settlers as they exterminated the Native Indians. Likewise with the Spanish. This
is the god that Welby prays to. The CoE was also an active
participant in the slave trade
Upon the death of
Christopher Codrington in 1710, his two estates were left to the Society for
the Propagation of the Gospel. The plantations were
reliant on regular supplies of new slaves from West Africa. Four
out of every 10 slaves bought by the plantation in 1740 died within three years
as it was cheaper to work them to death.
Whilst acknowledging
that the CoE is ‘institutionally racist’
Welby has failed to recognise his own part in it. The establishment of a medieval
church tribunal to try Sizer for ‘anti-Semitism’
allegations made by the Board of Deputies is an example of this racism.
The
Racist Board of Deputies [BoD] of British Jews
There is a saying in law that “He Who Comes Into Equity Must Come
With Clean Hands.”
In other words you cannot accuse others of a crime if you are also guilty! So
it is with the Board of Deputies.
The Board of Deputies is primarily an advocate and defender of Israeli
Apartheid. It is riddled with Islamaphobes and racists.
Samuel Hayek, Chair of JNF UK agreed
with the neo-Nazi White Replacement Theory in which Muslims are driving White people
from Europe. Its anti-Semitic version has Jews behind it. Hayek declared that “Jews have no future in England”:
The evidence
is the number of immigrants to England. The demographic of British society is
changing.
Asked if he was referring to Muslims,
he confirmed that was so:
Our problem in
the West is that we do not understand Islam. In Islam there is not a term for
‘peace’.
Gary Mond, another JNF trustee and also Senior
Vice-President of the BoD spoke of his “respect” for Hayek over the comments.
Mond also liked two tweets by Pamela
Geller – a White Supremacist and fascist, who has been banned from entry to the
UK. According to the Southern Poverty Law Centre
"We just have to hope that our
leaders wake up to the fact that all civilisation-west and east… is at war with
these evil bastards, and I have to say it at war with Islam. And, just as Islam
has lost before in history, it will lose again."
Mond was
not alone. Three years ago the BoD suspended for 6 years Roslyn Pine for
describing Arabs as “the vilest of
animals.” Three years previously Pine had said that it was a pity that the
pro-Palestinian Swedish foreign minister was “too old to be raped.”
This
didn’t stop the BoD Executive ruling that Pine could return early from
her suspension if she ‘apologised, showed
contrition and expressed remorse’. Contrast that with the 12 year ban on Stephen Sizer for a concoction of
tittle tattle and links made in error, as the BoD demanded its pound of flesh
or the demand of the BoD that Labour members
expelled for ‘anti-Semitism’ ‘will never
be readmitted to membership’.
What was the
reaction of Pine’s Finchley United Synagoguewhich she represented? The Jewish News reported that
Finchley
Synagogue will look into the plight
of its suspended deputy Roslyn Pine as a matter of “urgency”. (my emphasis)
Pine’s
suspension has not prevented her from taking part in the ‘BoD caucus’ group, which attempted to
remove Board President Marie van der Zyl in favour of far-right-winger Jonathan Neumann. Zyl only just won as
Neumann gained 43.7%. According to the Jewish News
Leaked emails show Roslyn
Pine has contributed to the online BoD-caucus group in recent weeks despite being
removed from the Board in 2018 …
One post, made on the
subscriber-only Google group on 18 March, lambasted the incumbent President
Marie van der Zyl after the Board released a statement expressing solidarity
with the traveller community and claiming a “shared history”.
Pine’s post included the
claim: “The idea that traveller
communities share a commonality with us is absurd.”
Board of Deputies Representative Robert Festenheim appears in Tommy Robinson Propaganda Video
If the Board
were serious about getting rid of its racists it would have removed Robert Festenheim, the Prestwich Deputy, solicitor and advisor
to Tommy Robinson and Robinson’s solicitor Daniel Berke.
In January 2022 Mond,
who received the highest vote of the 3 Vice-Presidents, was forced to resign. Mond had written on Facebook and tweeted that ‘all civilization’ is ‘at war with Islam.’ Note the contrast
with the Board’s fulminations against Stephen Sizer.
The tribunal ignored the fact that Section
3(d) of the Board’s Constitution states that the BoD shall:
(d) Take such appropriate action as lies within its
power to advance Israel's security, welfare and standing.
‘that
part of the constitution refers to promoting a sympathetic understanding of
Israel, nevertheless she maintained that, on occasions, the Board does
criticise the state of Israel.’
In fact the Board never criticises the Israeli State. When
Israeli snipers murdered 234 unarmed Palestinians who were demonstrating as
part of the Great Return march, the Board defended the murders and criticised the victims. Arkush and
Zyl, who both gave evidence to the tribunal, issued a press release stating:
“No state could allow its
borders to be breached by those who openly wish harm to its civilians. Israel
is defending its people from repeated violent attempts at mass invasion.
“The
responsibility for the violence lies with Hamas, a terrorist organisation with
the explicit stated aim of murdering Israeli civilians and the ultimate
destruction of the State of Israel.
It was a lie from start to finish.
Those who were murdered were unarmed civilians. Arkush and Zyl claimed that Israel’s
border was breached (there is no border, it’s a fence) but even if it had been
breached shooting down refugees in cold blood is still a war crime.
Palestinians at a distance from the fence like 21 year old Palestinian medic Razan al Najar were shot dead and thousands were
injured. The Board defended this and all Israel’s other crimes.
21 Year Old Palestinian Medic Razan al Najar was murdered by an Israeli soldier - she was considered a 'terrorist'
Hundreds of British Jews signed a letter protesting at the BOD’s support
for the murder of civilians. Yet the Tribunal preferred to accept the claim that
the BoD represents British Jews at face value.
When Israel passed the Jewish
Nation State Law in 2018, which affirmed that Israel was a state,
representing only its Jewish citizens, the BoD refused to criticise it. It expressed ‘concern’
Nor has the BoD expressed even the
slightest concern at the fact that the new Israeli government contains Jewish neo-Nazis as Ministers. Like
the 3 wise monkeys the Board says, sees and hears nothing.
The BoD Complains Again About
Stephen Sizer
If at first you don’t
succeed try and try again. Especially if there is a new, racist Archbishop of
Canterbury in place.
In
January 2015 Arkush made another Complaint, this time to Bishop Andrew, the new
Bishop of Guildford. On 30 January 2015, the Diocese published a press
statement quoting Sizer:
“I
have never believed Israel, or any other country was complicit in the terrorist
atrocity of 9/11, and my sharing of this material was ill-considered and
misguided.”
In
a press statement of February 2015, Bishop Andrew said
"Having now met Stephen, in my brand-new role as Bishop of Guildford, I
do not believe that his motives are anti-Semitic…”
‘Anti-Semitism’ was
not why Arkush complained. His purpose was to silence a critic of Israel’s
treatment of Christian Palestinians. This is why the witchhunt continued to its
medieval conclusion.
Nick Howard, son of former Tory leader Michael Howard, member of Christian Messianic sect, repeatedly defamed Stephen Sizer. He was refused ordination as a priest because of an "unwillingness to listen" to others' viewpoints."
Amazingly throughout this whole affair the BoD, the CCJ and
the various Evangelical defamers, Howard et al. have not been able to produce
one anti-Semitic word or phrase that Sizer has used.
The agenda of those persecuting Stephen
Sizer was crystal clear and Welby was aware from the start what it was. The
Church Tribunal under David Pittaway behaved in exactly the same way as the Congregation
of the Doctrine of Faith under the Inquisition.
At
times the tribunal descended from comedy to farce, for example when Van der Zyl
became hysterical and was rebuked by the Chair for refusing to answer questions
under cross-examination or when Arkush suffered a senior moment when being
reminded that a Subject Access Request to the CCJ had revealed that Nick
Howard, (son of Michael Howard) a Messianic (Christian) Zionist had been
drafting his crib sheets when he confronted Dr Sizer’s bishop.
What
on earth was the President of the Board of Deputies doing relying on crib
sheets prepared by Messianic Jews (who are not even recognised as Jews in
Israel)? Because they even more Zionist than the Zionists. What would members
of the BoD make of that?
And
where were the prosecution witnesses? Could they not find a single person
within the Jewish community who was offended by his Facebook posts or what he
had written?
But
embarrassing moments were shared equally between the Board of Deputies and the
Church of England.
On
the fourth day of the tribunal, we were convinced that the case had collapsed
when the expert witness for the prosecution, Bishop Ipgrave, chair of CCJ,
admitted under cross examination that he was not an expert witness and had either
not read or just plain ignored the instructions given him about what to include
and not include in his definition of antisemitism.
Exasperated,
at that point, the Chair turned to the only expert witness left standing, Tony Lerman,
and asked him to please help them out and provide a simple definition of
antisemitism.
When
Mr Lerman spelt out the blindingly obvious, namely that the discredited IHRA
misdefinition of antisemitism (on which the entire case against Dr Sizer
rested) fell at the first test of a definition, in being indefinite, it seemed
clear that the complaint had collapsed.
Perhaps
that is why the panel took six months to recover their composure before finally
publishing their decision, which, surprise, surprise, included the entire
wording of the aforementioned IHRA misdefinition. Perhaps they did so to
placate the BoD (who had coerced the Archbishops to adopt it) and make the
House of Bishops look less foolish for adopting the IHRA, (coincidentally within
days of the complaint being lodged).
Was
the shockingly disproportionate severity of the penalty in part because the
panel were miffed at being contradicted by the former Bishop of Jerusalem? In
his letter of support for Dr Sizer, Bishop Assal observed that they had clearly
not consulted a Middle East bishop on the necessity of wearing clerical attire,
in particular in a war zone like Southern Lebanon. The bishop pointed out that
clergy were required to wear a clerical shirt at all times and NOT doing so
would be regarded as irresponsible and ‘conduct unbecoming’.
In
what was clearly a rebuke to the Anglican hierarchy, this feisty octogenarian,
wished there were more courageous bishops and clergy like Dr Sizer willing to
challenge Israeli apartheid and their Christian Zionist fan club. He insisted
‘western appeasement’ (read silence of the CoE) was leading to the extinction
of Palestinian Christians in the Holy land. Not the legacy Welby might wish to
be remembered for.
The Decision
The Tribunal
consisted of 5 members - The Worshipful David Pittaway KC (Chair), The Rev. Geoffrey
Eze, The Rev. Canon Liz Hughes., Canon Andrew Halstead and Ms Gabrielle
Higgins.
My first impression on reading the Decision
was its superficiality. It was as if the tribunal found issues of racism,
anti-Semitism and Zionism too difficult to comprehend. Where decisions were
reached there was little or no explanation. It was intellectually lightweight.
Counsel for the Prosecution, Mr
Leviseur argued that Stephen Sizer’s
‘course of conduct, taken collectively, provokedand offended the Jewish community’.
And sure enough, the tribunal at
para. 95 of its decision, repeats this without even pausing for thought. They found
that:
the question is not whether
the Respondent intended to offend or provoke anyone nor whether the Tribunal is
offended by his behaviour but whether the Jewish community was offended and
provoked by his conduct
What if ‘the Jewish community’ (a
non-existent entity) were offended? A tribunal with a slightly greater cerebral
capacity would have asked whether you can have free speech if you don’t have
the right to offend people?
In the case of Katherine Elizabeth Scottow v CPS the Court of Appeal ruled that the right
to offend is an integral part of freedom of speech: “Freedom only to speak inoffensively is not worth having.” Not once
in their decision did the tribunal even begin to appreciate that even had this
mythical ‘Jewish community’ been offended by Sizer’s writings then that was the
price of free speech.
In para. 91 of its decision the
tribunal was reminded that Article 10 of the European Convention of Human
Rights affirms the right of free speech. The tribunal in its decision simply
ignored the submission.
In Handyside v. The United Kingdom, the European Court of Human Rights
held that the right to freedom of expression in Article 10 of the ECHR protects
not only expressions that are favorably received but also those that ‘offend, shock or disturb’.
The tribunal simply ignored case law
finding (para. 117) that:
To the extent that it was submitted on behalf of the
Respondent that any of the matters complained of come within section 8(3) of
the CDM, namely that they were the consequence of lawful political opinions or
activities, the Tribunal rejects that submission.
Again there was no reasoning. It is
difficult to avoid the conclusion that the tribunal was out of its depth.
Racists are undoubtedly offended by
anti-racism. Israeli Jews are offended by the idea that the Israeli state
should be a democratic state of all its citizens. Should we bow to Jewish
Supremacy?
Likewise the BoD wasn’t offended by
Stephen Sizer’s ‘anti-Semitism’ but his persistent and consistent advocacy for
the Palestinians. That and that alone has resulted in his being banned.
The
tribunal indulged in mundane clichés. How do you offend a whole community? What evidence was
there for such an assertion? 99.9% of British Jews have probably never read a
word by Sizer. Opposition to Zionism and support for the Palestinians certainly
offends the BoD because it is an aggressive pro-Israel lobby group.
The most cogent evidence was given by
Frances Webber of the Institute for Race Relations. The accusations against
Sizer had nothing to with either racism or anti-Semitism. ‘Causing offence’ was really about ‘thought policing’.
Webber emphasised that causing
offence is not synonymous with racism. Racism is certainly offensive but not
everything that is offensive is racist. The tribunal was incapable of moving
beyond ‘giving offence’ to the BoD and asking why the knives were out for Sizer
by an assortment of Zionist groups and individuals.
Summary of the Allegations
Against Stephen Sizer
The
first Board of Deputies complaint was made by Jonathan Arkush on 26 October
2012. It consisted of a series of trivialities such as inadvertently linking to
anti-Semitic sites such as the Ugly
Truth.
Another example of ‘anti-Semitism’
was posting photographs of the Israeli army under the title “Herod’s
Soldiers Operating in Bethlehem Today” Arkush drew the conclusion
that
Rev
Sizer is therefore insinuating that Israeli soldiers are therefore both child
killers and potential killers of Christ, or that any Jew in uniform becomes
these two things.
What Arkush was saying was that these
armed thugs should not be criticised because they were Jewish. The dishonesty
in Arkush’s argument is plain to see. He elides Jews and the Israeli army into
one. The Israeli army are child killers. Nearly 40 Palestinian children were killed out
of over 230 murdered Palestinians in 2022.How can the truth be anti-Semitic? The tribunal didn’t say.
On 13th June 2011 Sizer gave a TV interview in which he claimed that the British far
right and Zionists were forming
an alliance because their common enemy
were Muslims. But this is true but apparently still anti-Semitic! Was Tommy
Robinson attending the Board’s own demonstration in support of Israel an illusion?
On 5th July
2011Sizer linked to an article in the Palestine Telegraph
which accused Israel of killing scientists all over the world. Apparently that
is anti-Semitic although it is true.
On 24th
December 2011Sizer
gave an interview to Qods News Agency. Qods News Agency is apparently a
Holocaust denying website. Does that mean that Sizer is a holocaust denier?
On 31st December 2011Sizer’s blog linked to a piece by Uri
Avnery on the Redresswebsite.
It is not immediately obvious that Redress has anti-Semitic content. Avnery was
a former member of the Israeli Knesset and a founder of the Israeli peace camp.
A more absurd accusation is difficult to imagine.
On 1st March 2012 Sizer posted a picture of American bases surrounding Iran on his
blog. Because it came from the Veterans
Today site it is also not kosher.
Later in March 2012 Sizer, in an interview with
Arab radio, referred to the “power of the
Zionist lobby” and recommended Al Manar TV which apparently hosted a
programme on a global Jewish government. Was Sizer aware of this? Very
unlikely.
Marie van der Zyl complained that Sizer
had supported Raed Saleh, a Palestinian Israeli who is ‘known for spreading the blood libel claim against Jews and otherwise
inciting antisemitism.’ But that was a lie. Raed Saleh was accused of this by
the Home Office in 2011. The Upper Immigration Tribunal found that the
allegations against him were false and that the evidence had been tampered
with.
It is true that an Israeli court
subsequently found him guilty of racial hatred but here’s the problem. In
Israel Jews are never convicted of this offence even when they demonstrate
chanting ‘Death to the Arabs’. It is
only Palestinians who are ever found guilty of racism in Israel! See May
warned of weak case against Sheikh Raed Salah. Mr Justice Ockelton ruled on the blood libel issue that:
“...there is no reliable evidence of [Salah]
using words carrying a reference to the blood libel save in the single passage
in a sermon delivered five years ago. ... The absence of other evidence is
striking ... [Salah] is a prominent public figure and a prolific speaker. ...
his speeches are of interest to the authorties in Israel. ... We think it can
be fairly said that the evidence before us is not a sample, or 'the tip of the
iceberg': it is simply all the evidence there is.”
Raed Saleh denied that
he had referred to the blood libel but contrast that with van der Zyl’s
statement that he was ‘known for
spreading the blood libel claim against Jews’. Van der Zyl is a bad liar.
Jeff Halper and Stephen Sizer
There were many
supporting statements, including my own, in the tribunal but because of
procedural manoeuvring they were unable to be used because the Prosecution had
a veto on which witnesses were called. I want to quote from just one supporting
statement
by Dr Jeff Halper of the Israeli
Committee Against House Demolitions.
No one in the world has stood with the besieged Christians
of Palestine more than Dr Sizer. He has given voice to their distress when the
Church of England has been silent. The fact that the Church has gone to the
extreme of accusing Dr Sizer of anti-Semitism because he speaks up in defence
of Palestinian Christians only compounds the sin. It is morally grotesque that the Church of
England is submitting Dr Sizer to a medieval Tribunal (euphemistically called a
“Clergy Discipline Measure”) at the instigation of the organized British Jewish
community instead of examining its own role in facilitating Israel’s
persecution of Palestine’s Christians. And it is equally outrageous that Jews
even consider participating in religious Tribunals given what Jews experienced
in the Inquisition. “Support for Israel,” it seems, is exposing the immorality
and cynicism of the highest figures in our major religions.
I have known Dr. Sizer for over twenty years. I respect his
moral position on Israel. I certainly respect his academic work on Christian
Zionism, one of the most insidious and antisemitic religious doctrines in
modern history and profoundly anti-Israel (Israel exists to bring on the
Christian End of Days in which virtually all Jews die or become Christians). I
respect Dr. Sizer’s willingness to go beyond the comforts of parish life to
engage critically in an issue of central concern to us all: how to prevent
Israel from becoming the next apartheid South Africa, how to prevent Jews from
becoming Afrikaners, and how to liberate the Palestinian people from the yoke
of occupation and apartheid – causes Christians and Jews should be engaged with
rather than outdated and discredited Tribunals. And while I don’t use Dr.
Sizer’s faith-based language, I have never heard him utter a word that I would
consider antisemitic. To accuse or “convict” him of such is truly medieval. It
is all the more outrageous if you and your Tribunal are basing your judgement
on the false and tendentious position represented by the IHRA assertion that
any criticism of Israel is de facto antisemitic – a position disavowed by
Kenneth Stern, who drafted the IHRA paper (only intended as a “working
definition”), as well as by dozens of prominent Jewish and Israeli scholars and
progressive Jewish and Israeli organizations
The reality is that
Justin Welby, who covered for child abuse, has allowed this Medieval
Inquisition to take place because he is himself a Christian Zionist. In so
doing he has deliberately turned a blind eye to the ongoing attacks on the
Palestinian Christian community.
Christian protest in Jerusalem against repeated Zionist Attacks and Vandalism - Welby remains silent
Palestinian Christians
don’t suffer from taking offence at criticism. They suffer from arson at their
churches, repeated vandalism in their graveyards, spitting on the streets of
Jerusalem by Jewish nationalists, physical attacks by the Police and state.
It’s not hurt feelings but attempts to drive them out altogether that they
experience and in this Justin Welby is complicit because he refuses to condemn
the racism of Zionism. Like all Christian Zionists he believes that Jews will
‘return’ to Palestine in order that the Battle of Armageddon can take place and
then he and his fellows will rapture to heaven. Most Jews will perish but that
is a small price to pay for everlasting salvation.
Below are just some of
the headlines concerning, not fake ‘anti-Semitism’ or taking offence at
criticism but real racist attacks:
On the
morning of Thursday, February 2, a man entered the Chapel of Flagellation in
the Old City of Jerusalem, allegedly built on the site where Pontius Pilate
handed over Jesus for execution, the first of the Stations of the Cross in the
Catholic tradition. The vandal struck a wooden statue of Christ with a hammer….
This was the
fifth attack in five weeks against Christians, their places of worship and
their properties in the Holy Land, compared with 13 in the whole of 2020 and
nine in 2021.
Whereas Benzi Gopstein (left) was freed without charges, Raed Saleh was imprisoned for 3 years - Jewish racists are rarely prosecuted
Churches burned
Since 2015,
far-right Israeli activists have attacked several churches in Israel and
Palestine.
Some Israeli
figures
close to the growing Religious Zionism political movement, which has four MPs,
have been outspoken about banning Christmas and said that churches are places
of worshipping idols, calling for their destruction.
The Church
of the Multiplication on the Sea of Galilee suffered from an arson attack in 2015 at the
hands of an Israeli far-right group.
Last December, an
Israeli man attempted to set fire to East Jerusalem's historic Gethsemane
Church,
also known as the Church of All Nations, before being arrested.
On Thursday evening,
a group of settlers swarmed the Taboon Wine Barat the New Gate in the Christian
Quarter of Jerusalem. CCTV footage shows the group carrying banners and
throwing chairs violently toward the restaurant and those seated inside.
Israeli police,
who arrived an hour after a call had been made, ushered the crowd away but
reportedly made no arrests.
Clergymen
in the Armenian Church in Jerusalem say they are victims of harassment, from
senior cardinals to priesthood students; when they do complain, the police
don't usually find the perpetrators.
Ultra-Orthodox
young men curse and spit at Christian clergymen in the streets of Jerusalem's
Old City as a matter of routine. In most cases the clergymen ignore the
attacks, but sometimes they strike back. Last week the Jerusalem Magistrate's
Court quashed the indictment against an Armenian priesthood student who had
punched the man who spat at him.
Instead of conducting an
Inquisition and crucifying Stephen Sizer, Welby and the CoE would do well do
address the racism of an Israeli state that the BoD has repeatedly defended. It
doesn’t take a genius to work out that the close monitoring of Stephen Sizer’s
blog and social media output has nothing to do with anti-Semitism and
everything to do with Israel and Zionism.
When Jewish neo-Nazis
such as Itamar
Ben Gvir, who even Israeli courts have convicted of racial
incitement becomes Israel’s Police Minister and when proposals are being made to
repeal
a law preventing racist candidates standing election to the
Knesset, it is obscene that the CoE and its Christian Zionist defenders are
allowed to persecute a brave and fearless defender of the weak and oppressed.
