Why The Anglican Church’s Silence on Palestine?

Today there was a call out from Jerusalem to the world’s Christians from The Archbishop of Sebastia – Atallah Hanna

Hanna condemns Zionist falsification of the history of Christian holy places

As an ex-Christian myself I have long wondered at the silence of the Anglican clergy on the issue of Palestine. Like all Christians I sang the carol “O Little Town of Bethlehem” each Christmas and was familiar with place names such as Nazareth but the Anglican Church educated me only on events that happened there 2000 years ago, but completely failed to mention the ongoing struggles of our time.

The Archbishop explains one aspect of the problem that Palestinians are up against

“There are Zionist organisations, supported by Zionists which seek to falsify historic facts pertaining to the holy places, especially in Bethlehem and Jerusalem,” he said pointing out that those organisations are disseminating copies of a film that contains false information which contradicts history and Christian heritage and tries to promote places to visit by the tourists at the expense of authentic historic places associated with the Christian faith. This, he said, strips the Palestinian people of their holy places, both Muslim and Christian.

That statement definitely spells things out for everyone to understand, so I decided to search and find out what exactly is the Anglican Church’s stance on Israel/Palestine and if that might explain their silence. A quick search of key words provided me with the page entitled The Anglican Communion Holy Land Information Pages with a list of publications relating to the Israel/Palestine conflict. Two were related to the Anglican Church’s decision not to divest from Caterpillar despite some of their clergy calling for it. The Anglican church years later did divest, but apologetically claimed this was for economic reasons. Read about that here.

Then I found this document entitled “Children of Zion – Jewish and Christian Perspectives on the Holy Land”, this report comes from The Woolf Institute. Should I feel surprised that there is a pro Israel lobby group  apparently active in providing Hasbara to the Anglican Communion? A quick search of who exactly funds The Woolf Institute appears to confirm exactly that, check out the list here.

There we have it. Yesterday I wrote about Hope not Hate’s campaign to police British Mosques – certainly the majority of British Mosque leaders are afraid to speak out on the oppression of Palestinian Muslims or indeed Muslims or politics anywhere, for fear of being labelled terrorists, Anti Semitic or both. Then  I discover there seems to be a common thread between the silence  of both Muslim faith leaders and Christian faith leaders.  Whether pro Israel lobby groups such as those mentioned in the report “The Cold War on British Muslims” or ones which purport to educate Christians, the result is always to control the discourse and steer things in a way that is advantageous to Israel. The question is will Church leaders the world over respond to the call from Jerusalem for Truth Justice and Human Rights or will they remain complicit by their silence?

يَا أَهْلَ الْكِتَابِ لِمَ تَلْبِسُونَ الْحَقَّ بِالْبَاطِلِ وَتَكْتُمُونَ الْحَقَّ وَأَنتُمْ تَعْلَمُونَ ﴿٧١﴾

Posted by Laura Stuart on February 11, 2012. Filed under Palestine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.