Lord Carey Ashamed To Be "Anglican"

[cathromang]

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1138622572920

[TomUK]

Sadly i disagree with Lord Carey on this issue.

[CSMR]

The church leadership is giving it's political opinions and I think people such as the Jews mentioned in the article are misinterpreting that as the views of the Anglican church. I doubt it will have a great political impact, and it shouldn't have any economic impact at all.

[PaladinValer]

Israel has been guilty of many gross crimes against the Palestinian people. I applaud the Church of England province in its disinvestments and feel that Archbishop Carey needs to rethink his position.

[dragon79]

Anglicanism is far more than political stands and synods' decisions; is being part of a rich and tolerant tradition and i will never be ashamed to be part of all this.

[SirTimothy]

I'm with Dr Rowan Williams and Dr. John Sentamu on this one. Israel has been guilty of too many terroristic attacks on the Palestinians for us to just ignore them. The Palestinians are also attacking the Israelies, I don't dispute the fact that that also is terrorism, but we cannot afford to support EITHER side in this. I support disinvestment in Israel. Also in Palestine. We have a diocese of Jerusalem, which is NOT mostly Jewish. And it offends them when other dioceses do things without knowing the truth.

Timothy

[Simon_Templar]

You have got to be kidding me...

The sheer and utter hypocrisy of both this action by the church, and the opinions expressed here staggers me.

It would be LESS extreme for the church to withdraw all support from anything done in northern ireland and demand unilateraly that northern ireland stop opposing the actions of the IRA.

Frankly this kind of action and the opinions that back it harken back to the days of Chamberlain.

Lord Carey was absolutely right, and I share his sentiment.

[TomUK]

You have got to be kidding me...

The sheer and utter hypocrisy of both this action by the church, and the opinions expressed here staggers me.

It would be LESS extreme for the church to withdraw all support from anything done in northern ireland and demand unilateraly that northern ireland stop opposing the actions of the IRA.



I don't really think the two situations are comparable.

[Simon_Templar]

I don't really think the two situations are comparable.


Yes the Irish have a much longer history of being abused by the english and have done much less to merit animosity.

When was the last time you heard an irishman advocate the complete annihilation of the entire english race?

When was the last time you saw the Irish holding public rallies at which they had mickey mouse teach their kids chants about killing the english, and then had their kids march back and forth over the english flag and training their kids to handle explosives and automatic weapons??

When was the last time you saw the Irish parade the bodies of dead english soldiers through their streets, strip them naked and then hang them up in public?



The really funny thing is that this kind of behavior started even before the nation of Israel existed. The leader (until his death in the 1970's) and national hero of the palestinian people (to this day) Haj Amin Al Huseini (sp??) began this back in the 1930's because of his violent hatred for jewish people. He was at one time the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem until he was exiled because he instigated a series of riots against the Jewish inhabitants which resulted in the murder of numerous jews and arab christians.
The same fellow, after he was exiled became a good buddy of Hitler's and hung out in Nazi germany as a guest for a while.. where he made it known he felt the Nazi's were doing a capitol job of coming up with a solution to the jewish problem.

Most of you probably have never heard of ol' Haj, but you may know his more famous protege and nephew who changed his family name (because the family of the ol' mufti was so well known even among the arab states for starting civil strife) when he went to college in egypt, to the more well known Yasser Arafat.

Another interesting and somewhat ironic fact is that, in 1948 many of the palestinian arabs either left Israel voluntarily, or were exiled for their participation in the war against israeli independance. Most of them went to Jordan... which may lead one to the question.. why are they now back in Israel? well one of the major reasons is that they were all thrown out of Jordan after they fomented a rebellion and tried to overthrow the jordanian government.

Now just recently the palestinians have demonstrated their true majority beliefs by overwhelmingly electing as their leaders an avowed terrorist organization.

Considering that Israel is dealing with an enemy that has repeatedly publicly called for the complete annihilation of the jewish race and has unceasingly tried to do anything in their power to hurt or destroy the state of Israel, that has actively preached and practice the murder of civilians as a normal aspect of their policy.. I think they have shown remarkable forbearance.

Israel is literally are in a situation where one mistake could cost them there very existence, and we expect them to sit down and give in at every turn to the very peolpe who are bent on their destruction. Who are so intent on killing the jews that they literally don't care if it costs them their own life, or the lives of their children. We're talking about a society that trains its children to blow themselves up and to kill civilians.

There are some people caught in the middle, many of whom are arab christians.. but supporting the palestinians doesn't help them in the least because in many cases the palestinian arabs are just happy to oppress and kill arab christians as they are jews.

I've been to Israel. Ironicly long before I became Anglican I was there and I spent a few weeks doing manual labor in an anglican church working for a foreman who was a palestianian christian. I remember sitting and talking with him over lunch. This was before the intafada began. He suffered annoyances from Israel, like having to go through check points and maybe be searched or have his car searched. Even then bombings and terrorist attacks were relatively common by our standards.
But he faced as bad or worse from his "own people". I met a palestinian arab there in the Jerusalem market who was a christian secretly because he had been a muslim and converted and if those who knew him found out he converted he was afraid they would kill him.

So yea, the majority of the palestinian arabs are not some oppressed noble freedom fighters, they are some of the most extreme radicals in the world today who have made their circumstances through their violent and unreasoning hatred of the jews which goes back almost 70 years now and has been a staple of their very culture for the last two generations.
I think the fact that Israel is even willing to talk with them and hold any kind of negotiations is above and beyond what I would expect, and what I would do if I were them.

[SirTimothy]

Simon, allow me to state that that's one side of the story. One fairly biased side at that. I won't give details about the crimes that have happened in Israel that I know about, but I know missions with people on the ground in those countries and BOTH sides are absolutely disgraceful. How about the Israeli terrorism when they first started the country which inflamed the Palestinians to action which the USA turned a blind eye to?

I think frankly the church needs to stay out of both sides. Disinvest in Israel, go ahead, but don't reinvest in Palestine.

Timothy

[Wiffey]

Well, having been to Israel, I can tell you that the thing that struck me most was how small it is. A lovely place, but dwarfed by hostile nations surrounding it. This does not mean that I condone all of Israel's actions, because I don't. But I get that this is a people who have to live their lives on the defensive every day. It takes a certain toughness to survive there, and Sabras are tough as nails. I wouldn't last a month before having a total nervous breakdown.

It is hard to negotiate with a population that will not publicly recognize your right to exist. Not just the right of your nation to live, but the right of every Israeli, man, woman & child, to not be murdered or "driven into the sea". And Israel has tried to negotiate in good faith. But nothing short of overthrowing Israel is enough for the majority of Palestinians. None of the Palestinian leaders want to be known as the one who compromised with Israel...the hatreds are too deeply rooted for that. The Israelis, though far from perfect, are mostly willing to negotiate in order to live in peace. Although many are so burned out from decades of terror that they are starting to doubt that any solution can be reached.

And this is a subject that troubles many Israelis. When I was in Israel, in 1990, I had many conversations with my grandmother's childhood friend David, who immigrated to Israel before it was a state and fought in the war of Independence. At the time he was a history professor at Hebrew University. He was kind enough to guide our family around the old city of Jerusalem and to host us in his home.

Israeli Jews, even the non-religious (most Israelis are secular), take Jewish ethical ideals quite seriously. They understand that there is inequity built into the system and would dearly love to change this...but they also are realists who don't want to be killed. Honestly, if the Palestinians had been even remotely willing to have real peace and live with Israel in good faith (and not just negotiate to gain ground to better attack Israel from), then there would be an independent and functional Palestine right now. At one point it had been negotiated and Israel had made a very good offer...and in the end Arafat refused to go for it. He had demanded a lot, thinking Israel would never accede and the world would back him. But Israel said OK, and then it wasn't good enough.

Does Israel contribute to Palestinian suffering? Yes. But if all those security checks weren't in place, Israel would be on the receiving end of horrible violence. It is easy for you and I to sit and judge when we live in relative security...
When Israel unilaterally pulled out of Gaza (after Palestinians wouldn't negotiate), attacks increased. The sad truth is that most Palestinian suffering comes from having terrible leadership that would prefer to keep its own population impoverished and fighting than to make peace.


But although I might not like the whole divestment thing, I maintain that the Anglican Communion has much to be proud of.

[Simon_Templar]

Timothy,

Yes there were jewish psudo-military gangs prior to the formation of the nation. Most famous are the Hagenah and the stern gang. The Hagenah were a fairly legitimate group that smuggled refugees and attempted to defend jewish people in palestine from violence at the hands of the arab population

The stern gang was of more ill repute and would be more comparable to something like the IRA.

Both groups, however, were formed in response to arab instigated violence and murder.

The history of jewish-palestinian conflict is one of the palestinian arabs instigating violence and the jews responding with force, the majority of which has been reasonable and necessary, and then Israel getting blamed because they have been forced to defend themselves and their tactics were deemed to be too harsh by people who have the luxury of listening to reports on the BBC while they sit down to afternoon tea in the peace and quiet.

The palestinians have been funded by the US, Israel has given in to the few reasonable requests they make and even some of the unreasonable ones (in my opinion) and every time they just respond with more violence. They take the money we give them and throw celebrations with the common folk out dancing in the streets holding parades and throwing candy to children to celebrate 9-11.

Yes Israel has dealt harshly with the palestinians and innocent people have been hurt in the process, but seriously, what do you expect... Your talking about a people who are literally devoted to the complete destruction of israel and the death of every israeli. Thats not just propaganda slogan, they are literally devoted to it and will never stop pursuing their violent terrorist practices until they achieve the destruction of israel.. or they are so utterly defeated and broken that their will and ideology is able to be remolded.

The view that people have of Israel's "crimes" are totaly out of scope in the rest of the world as well. The UN's "peace keepers" in africa over the last few decades have committed far worse atrocities than anything Israel has dreamed of.. I don't see many Anglicans advocating a boycott of the UN.

[john23237]

Rare is the time that I can think of anything positive to say about the positions generally taken by Lord Carey, but in this case the man does have a point. Disinvesting in Caterpillar makes about as much sense as disinvesting in the Krump corporation would have in an attempt to make a statement regarding the First World War,. Caterpillar has no more control over the use of their equipment than Krump did over their "Big Berthas". More to the point, it ignores the larger question, namely that there can and will be no peace in the area until the Palestinian people accept the right of Isreal to exist. It is really quite that simple. As to Palestinian Christians, including the Anglican ones, given the clear contempt they seem to feel toward the church in North America, it is hard to have much sympathy toward them. They seem to have pathetic little toward some of us.

[cenimo]

It's getting harder and harder to stay in this church.

Nothing wrong with our own church (small town US), but on a higher basis, blech.