There will be a pro-Israel vigil outside the Palestine Solidarity Campaign concert at Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church on Tuesday December 1st, starting at 6pm.
Please bring Israeli flags – leaflets will be provided. Hope to see you there.
(For more information on the vigil and why it’s being held, see the first Comment below this post.)
This is from the organisers:
David Gifford, Chief Executive, Council for Christians and Jews says this church is “politicising the Christmas message. A Christmas carol service should be about the message of Christmas and by politicising that, it misses the point.”
- JC 26 November
*******************************
Q: So who do you represent and why are you protesting about a carol concert in a church?
A: We are a group of concerned individuals of all faiths and none, who represent no organisation. We are protesting because this event is organised by the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign whose agenda goes far beyond working for the creation of a Palestinian state alongside the State of Israel. The PSC supports the terrorist organisation Hamas whose Charter seeks the genocide of Jews and the destruction of Israel. The PSC was responsible for the appallingly biased TUC Congress statement on Israel which demonised that country.
Q: So why has this church agreed to hold it?
A: Because it is led by a Vicar Simon Perry who – disgracefully – buys into the PSC’s propaganda. He supports the event and believes “people here would endorse the PSC”. He supports a boycott of Israeli goods and fails to see anything antisemitic about “Seven Jewish Children”. Maybe he needs to go back to theological college.
Q: What’s wrong with a boycott of Israeli goods – as the PSC wants?
A: Israel has every right to defend itself and so the would-be boycotters – who are singling out Israel for economic damage – must have a motivation beyond the political. Palestinian trade unions have spoken out against a boycott because it would harm Palestinian and Israeli workers alike. Shaher Saeed, general secretary of the Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU), told representatives of seven British trade unions who visited recently that the organisation had so little interest in the subject it had never discussed a boycott and therefore had no policy on it.
Q: What else is wrong with the carol concert?
A: The carol concert features Caryl Churchill, author of the antisemitic play “Seven Jewish Children”, which demonises Israel and suggests that Israeli parents teach their children to hate Arabs.
Q: Was Israel’s action in Gaza almost one year ago justified?
A: Israel could not ignore the 12,000 rockets in eight years which made normal life in Southern Israel impossible. In the words of Colonel Richard Kemp (former commander of the British forces in Afghanistan): “During Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli Defence Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare”. The incidence of rockets fired by Hamas into Israel has fallen sharply, so the operation can be called a success.
Q: What facts does the PSC ignore because they are inconvenient?
- that Bethlehem is under the control of the Palestinian Authority
- that Gaza was returned by Israel to Palestinian government in 2005
- that Gilad Shalit is in his fourth year of captivity in Gaza
- that Christian Palestinians are persecuted
- that Israel is a beacon of liberalism, tolerance and democracy in a region where these attributes (that we take for granted in the UK) are otherwise absent.
We wish you the greetings of the season and a happy and peaceful 2010.
Thanks Chas
This is the terrorist Gaza government that the PSC supports! (love the last sentence… not much can happen on the bike, anyway!)
Hamas Bans Women Dancers, Scooter Riders in Gaza Islamic Drive Share Business ExchangeTwitterFacebook By Daniel Williams of Bloomberg
Nov. 30 – The Islamic Hamas movement banned girls last month from riding behind men on motor scooters and forbade women from dancing at the opening of a folk museum. Girls in some schools must wear Islamic headscarves and cloaks.
Signs of Hamas’s creeping Islamization are everywhere in Gaza, the Mediterranean coastal enclave that Hamas has run by itself since 2007. Gaza is already politically divided from the West Bank, the Palestinian territory administered by the secular Fatah movement.
“Ruling by itself, Hamas can stamp its ideas on everyone,” said Mkhaimar Abusada, a political science professor at Gaza’s al-Azhar University. “Islamizing society has always been part of Hamas strategy.”
Hamas-Fatah infighting has diverted Palestinians from their quest for statehood and from presenting a united front at proposed U.S.-brokered peace talks with Israel. With no Palestinian elections on the horizon — a vote scheduled for January was canceled — Hamas has free rein to rule in Gaza.
Hamas swept Palestinian legislative balloting in 2006 and took over the Gaza Strip a year later when its gunmen routed forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who still governs the West Bank. Syria and Iran back Hamas, while the U.S., its Middle East allies and the European Union support Abbas’s rule.
Some of the efforts are meeting resistance. When Supreme Court Justice Abdel Raouf Al-Halabi ordered women lawyers on July 26 to wear headscarves and caftans in court, attorneys contacted satellite television stations including Al-Arabiya to protest. On Sept. 6, Hamas’s Justice Ministry rescinded the directive.
Hamas officials say they have no plans to impose Islamic law. “What you are seeing are incidents, not policy,” said Younis al-Astal, a Hamas legislator. “We want Islamic law to be the standard, but we believe in persuasion.”
In an Oct. 13 speech, Abbas said Hamas was establishing an “emirate of darkness” in Gaza. Abbas’s Fatah movement has long viewed itself as a secular nationalist movement open to Muslims and Christians.
At the immigration office at Gaza’s border with Israel, a sign warns that alcoholic beverages, forbidden under Islam, will be poured out “in front of the owner.”
The government’s Islamic Endowment Ministry has deployed Virtue Committee members to preach at public places to warn of the dangers of immodest dress, card playing and dating.
The opening of the Palestinian Heritage Museum on Oct.7 was meant to include a rendition of the dabke, a line dance performed by girls and boys. Except that no girls were allowed.
Black-shirted men from Hamas carrying AK-47s appeared at the gates of the museum, on Gaza’s waterfront, said Jamal Salem, the curator. They said girls shouldn’t dance because it wasn’t religiously proper. Nor could they share the stage for the inaugural speeches, said Salem.
“They are trying to take Palestinian culture and make it all their own,” Salem said. “They say our traditions are against the law. Their law.”
In August, headmasters of several schools ordered girls to don white head scarves and black cloaks called jilbabs. They sent several girls in jeans home, according to Gaza press reports. The Education Ministry later said the orders were unauthorized acts of individual school officials.
“The episodes had an effect anyway,” said Eyad Sarraj, a psychiatrist and human rights campaigner. “What parent wants to be seen to defy Islamic rules?”
Abusada, the Gaza political science professor, said Hamas only retreats from overt Islamization for fear of “provoking” such secular-ruled Arab countries as Egypt, with which it competes for support with Abbas.
“At the same time, Hamas is under pressure from some of its own members as well as even more radical groups to implant a purist version of Islam,” he said.
Hamas is also wary of openly pressing for rule by religious edict because it undermines the group’s claim to legitimacy under Palestinian civil law, which set guidelines for the 2006 legislative vote, said Subhia Juma, a lawyer at the Independent Commission for Human Rights in Gaza.
“Hamas backs off when it looks like they are governing under Islamic law and people complain,” she said.
In June, black-clad constables approached journalist Asmaa al-Ghoul, 27, and friends on a north Gaza beach, al-Ghoul said. Her offense: swimming in trousers and a blouse, not robes.
Male companions, including her brother, tried to defend her. Al-Ghoul said she phoned the government spokesman, who called off the police.
Hamas police spokesman Rafik Abu Hani said the crackdowns were abnormalities.
“Even here, we don’t make everyone wear Islamic-style beards,” he said, pointing to a clean-shaven aide.
Everyone backs alcohol prohibition, Abu Hani said, and the motorcycle restriction is a safety issue.
Al-Astal, the Hamas legislator, said it wasn’t a coincidence that youth were the principal targets of the push.
“We are working on young people, the next generation, to be more correctly Islamic,” he said. The older generation “is lost.”
And as for motorcycles: “A girl has to hold onto a boy’s waist to ride in the back. Things can happen. You know what I mean,” he said.
Intersting to note that this “concert” has not made it to the diary of the church itself. I wonder why?
Thank you Chas. I will be there, of course.
Great stuff, and I wish I could be there. But what’s going to be done about this: http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=4936 STUC hand in hand with SPSC anti-Semites rubbing the reputation of trade unions in the dirt. When will there be a backlash from the union members who pay for this from their subs?
Good luck for the demonstration. Shame on Bloomsbury Church for allowing the pro-terrorism PSC to have an event there.
http://tinyurl.com/ylck3el
There will be another demo on 8th to protest against these self-haters singing carols with the words altered to tell slanderous lies about Israel
Good luck, guys. Will be thinking about you. Don’t forget to tell the geographically challenged among us all about it afterwards.
Oh look, they’re going to terrorise poor Ahava shop workers as well, as they have been filmed doing before. I wonder if it’ll get violent, as the protests in Ireland became. People should turn up to the Ahava shop on the same day and, as the protest happens, make a point of buying as much stuff from the shop as possible before the faces of the hateful “protesters”.
http://www.bigcampaign.org/index.php?mact=Calendar,cntnt01,default,0&cntnt01event_id=65&cntnt01display=event&cntnt01detailpage=73&cntnt01return_id=73&cntnt01returnid=73
Why is Vicar Simon Perry hosting an event for a group that supports Hamas – persecutors of Christians in the Middle East?
Chas, try asking these Christian Zionist nut-cases tonight what they think of your queer lifestyle, that’d make for an interesting debate at the demo! But I suppose they’ll be polite, forgive you due to your support for Zionism, but continue to hate the rest of us. These Christian Taliban are theologically no different from the Islamists you oppose, although their methods may be different, they both want the same result, eradication of queers. By siding with them you are no different to the PSC who allegedly side with Hamas, both hate queers, and both would see harm done to us given the chance.
My ‘queer lifestyle’?! What a vivid imagination you have!
‘Although their methods may be different’ – how briskly you set aside the difference between quiet disapproval and execution.
And in any case, this is not a Christian Zionist vigil. It is a vigil in support of Israel, which has a very tolerant record on homosexuality by the way.
Sshhh Chas, Kevin needs to ensure that moral equivalency in his brain is upkept at all times. Otherwise he might start seeing the wood from the trees, which wouldn’t do.
A desperate comment Kevin. There probably hasn’t been a demonstration on any issue in the history of mankind (other than specific gay rights protests) that hasn’t been attended by someone who disapproves of homosexuality. By your strange logic gay people should not attend any demonstration at all in case someone on it has a less than enthusiastic attitude to matters gay. Ridiculous.
And anyway, as Chas said this demonstration is not about Christian Zionism or gay rights.
Chas, you may not have noticed, but Christians the world over are hardly expressing quiet disapproval of queer people, and neither are Jews. They’re not exactly quiet in the US, and I seem to recall a recent massacre in Tel Aviv, almost certainly committed by a person of the Jewish faith (but I bet you’ll blame Hamas!). Some Christians also seem quite keen on violently persecuting queers in Europe, Africa & Asia, but hey, as long as Israel ‘tolerates’ gays, who cares!
Yes, Israel is very tolerant of homosexuality. I’ve been there and researched this. I interviewed countless people including IDF soldiers gay and straight, Israeli politicians gay and straight, Israeli Arabs who value the safety that Israel gives them. So I speak with knowledge.
I’m not a Christian so I’ve no idea why you keep throwing what they’ve done at me. You should address your objections direct to them.
As for your case against Jews on gay issues, you are able to point to one crime, committed by one person who may or may not be Jewish. Have you ever thought of becoming a barrister?
This is not about Chas’s personal life though good on you Chas for intelligent replies to unintelligent, uninformed and provocative statements.
This is about very misguided use of church facilities and Christian messages. David Gifford has it right. We saw a similar message used last year when so called Carol Concerts turned into Israel bashing; it’s not a new tactic. However, we will be there to protest in a way the terror organisations and obviously Vicar Simon Perry cannot understand….peacefully.
Am Yisrael Chai and I wish everyone season’s greetings!
Chas, congratulations on responding so calmly to Kevin the Idiot. His attempts at suggesting that Christian homophobia, as unpleasant as it is, somehow excuses antisemitic bigotry is difficult to understand. His logic seems to fail me.
All societies harbour homophobes. Not all societies have state-mandated hanging of teenagers for the crime of being gay. Most religions have some peculiar problem with homosexuality. Not all religions actively seek to kill those who are. If Kevin genuinely cannot tell the difference, then I fear for his moral compass. But I think we all know that he can – he just needs to pretend that Israel is as nasty as he needs it to be to justify the horrific prejudice against it.
I’m there in spirit, and wish you all the best of luck and no broken bones. I was in London over the weekend, but am now back in my corner of Sleepy Hollow, or I should certainly have come.
25 there including 4 Christians all the way from Wales
The PSC crew were quite surprised to have opposition
JC photographer was there, good photos as we were eyeball to eyeball with the PSC – no police to separate us
I agree with Questor – the PSC people were shocked to have opposition. They prefer to do their Jew-bashing without dissent.
Among the comments of people arriving at the PSC event:
“I wish Hitler had killed you.”
What charmers.
Well done to everyone who came to the vigil. It was good to meet OyVaGoy readers.
My husband was able to be there last night – he was very impressed that people had come from as far as Wales. He also mentioned the lack of historical grasp that people challenging him appeared to have.
Well done to everyone who was there. Thank you.
Hi Chas
I was pleased to meet the man behind the blog last night . It was pretty tough in the trenches especially when the Church /PSC produced their own WMD,a slightly deranged Deborah Fink in full alto soprano mode with her revised rendition of 12 Days of Christmas . When she was not singing she was pitching slogans in a high pitched sing a long style .Pretty spooky.
Hope to see you at the next protest!
Regards
Harvey
Thanks Harvey. It was great to meet you and well done on the volume last night. Yes, Ms Fink gave it a surreal air. At least she had a smile on her face, unlike many of those on that side.
See you soon I am sure. Keep well.
Chas:
Fink’s pasted-on smile is a sign of her confused mental state/disordered personality, not an indication of good humour.
http://www.christiansforzion.com/
“Bloomsbury Baptist Church again disgraced Christianity tonight when they hosted the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign Christmas carol service. Friends of Christians for Zion attended along with members of the Jewish community to demonstrate in a dignified fashion against this event.
Phil Lewis from Merthyr Tydfil told Christians for Zion after the service that PSC speakers accused Israel of Ethnic cleansing and shooting Palestinian children from watchtowers. These accusations have no foundation in reality and are lies that should never be condoned in any gathering but certainly not in a Christian Church.
PSC are holding another propaganda meeting in St. Pauls Actors Church Covent Garden, London, next Tuesday evening when Jenny Tonge will speak. Jenny Tonge has a track record of demonising Israel and once said that she sympathised with suicide bombers. Christians for Zion believe that Christmas carols are to be changed to anti-Israel propaganda songs and will be sung at this event.
St Pauls are advertising the event on their Web site in this way; 7.30pm Bethlehem Now ..Lessons and Songs of Protest for Palestine. Tickets £10.
You can visit their web site at http://www.actorschurch.org/content/callen.htm
Christians for Zion are pleading with the Christian community to do all it can to stop such events being hosted by Churches here in the UK. These events are nothing more than a platform for ant-Semitism and although Christendom has practiced anti-Semitism throughout the centuries there are many Christians in the UK who are disgusted and offended by it. If you feel these events are offences to our faith then please contact us.
Christians for Zion have not received any replies to letters to Bloomsbury Baptist Church but we have received the following reply from the Baptist Union today. (Go to Mike Fryer’s Blog on this Web site to read the letter sent to the Baptist Union).
This is their reply ;
“As you may be aware the Baptist Union of Great Britain is – as its name suggests – a ‘Union’ of churches. This means that each congregation has freedom to make decisions regarding its own life and practice. Therefore it would be inappropriate for anyone here at Baptist House to determine what actions Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church should take. I would assure you that we will always condemn acts of violence against civilians, whether perpetrated by the Palestinian Authority or the State of Israel. We would also want to stand alongside all those who are victims of oppression, and speak out for those who are denied basic human rights”.
Please watch this short video of a Palestine Solidarity Campaign supporter arriving at the Church yesterday evening: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fUKsDG9v2A
Chas
Suggest you forward this video footage to Christian Friends of Israel who may wish to use it as part of a work shop theme on antisemitism at some stage . Also the Babtist Church in order that they might get a flavour of the views of one of their congregants .The JC and CST too .Is there any way it could achieve wider circulation ?
All good ideas Harvey. I know the people who made the video have already distributed it widely. I agree with all your suggestions.
http://www.hurryupharry.org/2009/12/02/carols-with-caryl-and-more/
I’ve just seen that antisemite – for that is undeniably what he is, given his disgusting remarks to Jonathan Sacerdoti – on the video on the JC website. It’s very shocking to find an Englishman calling Jews “evil”, etc. I thought that kind of hate was reserved for neo-Nazis and Islamofascists.
I heard alot of hooting in the background, at the start of the video clip – I couldn’t help wondering whether these were drivers hooting in solidarity with the Israeli flags. I certainly hope so!
The most amusing thing about what that antisemite is his suggesting that Jews have nothing like “Love thy neighbour” in their liturgy. I’m not sure what’s a more delicious irony: that the phrase comes from the Torah (Leviticus 19:18) or that an anti-Zionist should suggest all British Jews should “go back to Israel”.
Yes, he needs to get with the programme: the PSC wants less Jews in Israel, not more!
Any photos from the event? Well done guys!
The JC took quite a lot, Anna. So keep an eye one this week’s paper and/or their website.
Chas, thanks for all your input. You deserve a ‘MOTIE’ (member of the ‘Israel Empire’!)
Chas
Any chance of you contacting the church to try and get an interview or at least a statement from Simon Perry . It’s more plausible coming from you as a journalist .
I shall try, Harvey. They are very defensive in correspondence.