The decision of the Methodist Conference to endorse a wholly one sided report purporting to help resolve the conflict in the Holy Land has led to a predictable outcry in the region.
The English language newspaper the Jerusalem Post saw it as a major story. Our Jewish neighbours were quoted:
Jewish community leadership organizations reacted with dismay. In a joint statement, the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Leadership Council said it was, “This is a very sad day, both for Jewish-Methodist relations and for everyone who wants to see positive engagement with the complex issues of Israeli-Palestinian relations. The Methodist Conference has swallowed hook, line and sinker a report full of basic historical inaccuracies, deliberate misrepresentations and distortions of Jewish theology and Israeli policy.
“The deeply flawed report is symptomatic of a biased process: The working group which wrote the report had already formed its conclusions at the outset. External readers were brought in to give the process a veneer of impartiality, but their criticisms were rejected. The report’s authors have abused the trust of ordinary members of the Methodist Church, who assumed that they were reading and voting on an impartial and comprehensive paper, and they have abused the goodwill of the Jewish community, which tried to engage with this issue, only to find that our efforts were treated as an unwelcome distraction,” the statement said.
David Gifford, the chief executive of the Council of Christians and Jews, said he was disappointed that the Israeli narrative was not heard during the debate.
“I was very disappointed at the emotive nature of the debate which again did not hear fairly also the pain and cry of the Israeli,” Gifford said. “It was right to hear the pain of the Palestinian but in the end the vote of the Methodist Conference was to boycott goods and services that originate from the West Bank. We shall have to see how this will affect future relationships of the Methodist Church with other churches, the CCJ [Council of Christians and Jews] and with the British Jewish community.”
In an opinion piece Robin Shepherd speaks of the Banality of Methodist Evil. He observes:
"....in watching the discussions at the Methodist Conference which approved the boycott, there was little in the way of the visceral hatred of Israel which we have become so accustomed to seeing in academic settings or in the trade unions. Here was a group of almost stereotypically ordinary, middle-class, English Christians calmly reciting every hackneyed anti-Israeli calumny in the book.
He accurately cites one delegate (you can see the debate here if you want to check it out) describing a picture, which she held up in front of her, of a small boy “with large eyes” and “deep pain” in those eyes. “This little boy lives in Gaza,” she said ominously, adding (without irony) that the conference should “speak and act for those whose voices are not heard."
Former President Graham Carter's statement's on anti-semitism are highlighted "when he comes to the question of anti- Semitism that he meets his undoing. “I want to state quite clearly and categorically that there is no hint of anti-Semitism in what we have said or in what we intend,” he stated boldly. “If other people want to do things like that, that is their problem. It is not our problem as a Methodist church. We need to be honest about where stand and what we feel. And if we are concerned about anti-Semitism, why don’t we talk about the anti-Islam approach?” I leave it to others to judge whether there is a “hint of anti-Semitism” in what they have said or intended.
But, in so far as his comments make any sense at all, one way of summarizing the rest could be as follows: “If this campaign against Israel results in more anti-Semitism, we in the Methodist Church wash our hands of it. We’ll act, and the Jews can take the consequences.
Shepherd managed to speak with a Methodist Press Officer (incidentally, purely on a professional level is it really the role of a press officer to make public statements in their own name? One Methodist press officer even had a by-lined article on the issue on the Guardian website. I issue hundreds of press releases, my name rarely appears in print, in fact I see the publication of my name when speaking on behalf of a client as a professional failure, the decision makers should be the public face of an organisation, not a press officer).
"I did speak to the Methodist Church’s head of media relations, Anna Drew, whose well prepared brief offered a lesson in where things have gone so badly wrong.
“Do you have any boycotts of other countries in the world, Saudi Arabia for example, where Christianity is banned?” I asked.
“Almost certainly not,” she said.
“So why have you singled out the Jewish state?” I asked.
“We have not singled out the Jewish state,” she replied, saying that the boycott was not against Israel, merely against the occupied territories.
And so the conversation went on, going round and round in circles as Drew summoned up every ounce of conceivable pedantry to argue that singling out the policy of a particular country was substantially different from singling out the country itself, even though such a boycott applied to no other country or its policies.
“Don’t you realize that you’re joining a massive global campaign against Israel?” I asked.
“There isn’t a campaign against Israel,” she replied firmly. “It’s not as simple as that.”
“You don’t accept that you’ve just jumped on a fashionable bandwagon?” I asked in amazement.
“We are the first church... to do this... so we are not being fashionable,” she replied.
At which point, what can you really say? Overall, a church that behaves in the manner of the Methodists has buried its credibility under a gigantic dunghill of intransigence, pedantry, lies and distortions.
But Shepherd suggests this response to the Israelis:
But let us not allow this matter to rest with a mere recognition of whom and what they have chosen to become.
If the Methodist Church is to launch a boycott of Israel, let Israel respond in kind: Ban their officials from entering; deport their missionaries; block their funds; close down their offices; and tax their churches.
If it’s war, it’s war. The aggressor must pay a price.
Alas Mr Shepherd doesn't know the sad truth about the British Methodist Church.
Despite speaking with such great authority on the challenges facing the peoples of Israel and Palestine there is no Methodist Church in Israel.. There are no funds to block, no offices to close down, no churches to tax. No wonder our Church is so well informed. We have the luxury of speaking from a position of unrivalled ignorance.
Mr Shepherd would be hard put to find any British Methodist "missionaries" in Israel, Palestine or anywhere else on God's earth. Methodists don't tell people about Jesus any more. We just point fingers and parade our bigotry, that's far easier, especially in a complex situation.![]()
The English language newspaper the Jerusalem Post saw it as a major story. Our Jewish neighbours were quoted:
Jewish community leadership organizations reacted with dismay. In a joint statement, the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Leadership Council said it was, “This is a very sad day, both for Jewish-Methodist relations and for everyone who wants to see positive engagement with the complex issues of Israeli-Palestinian relations. The Methodist Conference has swallowed hook, line and sinker a report full of basic historical inaccuracies, deliberate misrepresentations and distortions of Jewish theology and Israeli policy.
“The deeply flawed report is symptomatic of a biased process: The working group which wrote the report had already formed its conclusions at the outset. External readers were brought in to give the process a veneer of impartiality, but their criticisms were rejected. The report’s authors have abused the trust of ordinary members of the Methodist Church, who assumed that they were reading and voting on an impartial and comprehensive paper, and they have abused the goodwill of the Jewish community, which tried to engage with this issue, only to find that our efforts were treated as an unwelcome distraction,” the statement said.
David Gifford, the chief executive of the Council of Christians and Jews, said he was disappointed that the Israeli narrative was not heard during the debate.
“I was very disappointed at the emotive nature of the debate which again did not hear fairly also the pain and cry of the Israeli,” Gifford said. “It was right to hear the pain of the Palestinian but in the end the vote of the Methodist Conference was to boycott goods and services that originate from the West Bank. We shall have to see how this will affect future relationships of the Methodist Church with other churches, the CCJ [Council of Christians and Jews] and with the British Jewish community.”
In an opinion piece Robin Shepherd speaks of the Banality of Methodist Evil. He observes:
"....in watching the discussions at the Methodist Conference which approved the boycott, there was little in the way of the visceral hatred of Israel which we have become so accustomed to seeing in academic settings or in the trade unions. Here was a group of almost stereotypically ordinary, middle-class, English Christians calmly reciting every hackneyed anti-Israeli calumny in the book.
He accurately cites one delegate (you can see the debate here if you want to check it out) describing a picture, which she held up in front of her, of a small boy “with large eyes” and “deep pain” in those eyes. “This little boy lives in Gaza,” she said ominously, adding (without irony) that the conference should “speak and act for those whose voices are not heard."
Former President Graham Carter's statement's on anti-semitism are highlighted "when he comes to the question of anti- Semitism that he meets his undoing. “I want to state quite clearly and categorically that there is no hint of anti-Semitism in what we have said or in what we intend,” he stated boldly. “If other people want to do things like that, that is their problem. It is not our problem as a Methodist church. We need to be honest about where stand and what we feel. And if we are concerned about anti-Semitism, why don’t we talk about the anti-Islam approach?” I leave it to others to judge whether there is a “hint of anti-Semitism” in what they have said or intended.
But, in so far as his comments make any sense at all, one way of summarizing the rest could be as follows: “If this campaign against Israel results in more anti-Semitism, we in the Methodist Church wash our hands of it. We’ll act, and the Jews can take the consequences.
Shepherd managed to speak with a Methodist Press Officer (incidentally, purely on a professional level is it really the role of a press officer to make public statements in their own name? One Methodist press officer even had a by-lined article on the issue on the Guardian website. I issue hundreds of press releases, my name rarely appears in print, in fact I see the publication of my name when speaking on behalf of a client as a professional failure, the decision makers should be the public face of an organisation, not a press officer).
"I did speak to the Methodist Church’s head of media relations, Anna Drew, whose well prepared brief offered a lesson in where things have gone so badly wrong.
“Do you have any boycotts of other countries in the world, Saudi Arabia for example, where Christianity is banned?” I asked.
“Almost certainly not,” she said.
“So why have you singled out the Jewish state?” I asked.
“We have not singled out the Jewish state,” she replied, saying that the boycott was not against Israel, merely against the occupied territories.
And so the conversation went on, going round and round in circles as Drew summoned up every ounce of conceivable pedantry to argue that singling out the policy of a particular country was substantially different from singling out the country itself, even though such a boycott applied to no other country or its policies.
“Don’t you realize that you’re joining a massive global campaign against Israel?” I asked.
“There isn’t a campaign against Israel,” she replied firmly. “It’s not as simple as that.”
“You don’t accept that you’ve just jumped on a fashionable bandwagon?” I asked in amazement.
“We are the first church... to do this... so we are not being fashionable,” she replied.
At which point, what can you really say? Overall, a church that behaves in the manner of the Methodists has buried its credibility under a gigantic dunghill of intransigence, pedantry, lies and distortions.
But Shepherd suggests this response to the Israelis:
But let us not allow this matter to rest with a mere recognition of whom and what they have chosen to become.
If the Methodist Church is to launch a boycott of Israel, let Israel respond in kind: Ban their officials from entering; deport their missionaries; block their funds; close down their offices; and tax their churches.
If it’s war, it’s war. The aggressor must pay a price.
Alas Mr Shepherd doesn't know the sad truth about the British Methodist Church.
Despite speaking with such great authority on the challenges facing the peoples of Israel and Palestine there is no Methodist Church in Israel.. There are no funds to block, no offices to close down, no churches to tax. No wonder our Church is so well informed. We have the luxury of speaking from a position of unrivalled ignorance.
Mr Shepherd would be hard put to find any British Methodist "missionaries" in Israel, Palestine or anywhere else on God's earth. Methodists don't tell people about Jesus any more. We just point fingers and parade our bigotry, that's far easier, especially in a complex situation.
