FAIR

Rev. Naim Ateek’s “A Palestinian Christian Cry for Reconciliation” is replete with factual errors, misrepresentations, material omissions and distortions and does not present the facts of the Arab/Israeli conflict in a balanced or even handed manner. Nor does it promote peace and justice. Rather, it is a somewhat blatant attempt to portray Jews and Israelis in as damning a light as possible. Rev. Ateek reveals his own bias and racist attitudes with his overt stereotyping of Jews and Israelis as inherently immoral, racist, violent and conspiratorial.

1. According to Rev. Ateek “Behind the [Israeli] judges who enforce the laws lies an unjust and discriminatory racist system that reflects the moral bankruptcy of the people holding power in Israel.” (p. 17)

2. He refers to the Israeli “spirit of arrogance, superiority, and racism.” (p. 169)

3. Rev. Ateek routinely characterizes Palestinians only as innocent victims and Israelis only as violent oppressors: “It is possible to compare the Palestinians in their vulnerability with that of the widow [in the parable of the unjust judge from Luke]. Israel, with its power and powerful allies, has been able to oppress, exploit, dominate, and suppress the Palestinians.” (p. 18)

4. He claims that “Today, Israel’s concept of nationalism is considered racist.” (p. 155)

5. Rev. Ateek even employs Biblical and scriptural themes to characterize Jews as racists, referring to the “racist utterances” of Old Testament prophets (p. 55), describing Hebrew Scripture prophets as “narrow and racist” (p. 56) and demanding that the Old Testament be “de-Zionized.” (p. 56)

6. Rev. Ateek charges the Israelis with psychological corruption when he says “The psychological warfare against the Palestinians . . . .has its roots in the Israeli psychological need to be in control and to humiliate its Arab citizens.” (pp. 47- 48)

7. After accusing Israelis of “feeling that the world owes them . . .” Rev. Ateek goes on to employ the classic anti-Semitic canard of Jewish conspiracy by stating that “By playing on feelings of guilt about the Holocaust, Zionists have been able to make this attitude dominant in public discourse.” (p. 56)

8. Rev. Ateek employs an irrational and sinister Jewish conspiracy motif as he accuses Israel of conspiring to make the Palestinians violent: “from its inception in the rise of the Zionist movement to the latest incidents of violence in Palestine today, the government of Israel has intentionally cultivated, fed, and nourished violence within the Palestinian community.” (p. 48)

9. Rev. Ateek coopts Jewish voices to further develop his irrational, sinister Jewish conspiracy motif, by quoting a former Israeli who claims that Israelis deliberately foster Palestinian violence against themselves: “To avoid the destabilisation that would result from ethical inquiry, the Israeli state must hide the core problem, by nourishing a victim mentality among Israeli Jews. To sustain that mentality and to preserve an impression of victimhood among outsiders, Israel must breed conditions for violence. Whenever prospects of violence against it subside, Israel must do its utmost to regenerate them.”(p. 45)

Since time immemorial, Jews have been characterized by anti-Semites as

an inherently perverted and morally deficient people.

To witness this ideology and tactic being used by a Christian clergyman

while claiming to be standing for justice and peace

is alarming and morally offensive.