ISRAEL NEWSHow the Anti-Israel Actions of the World Council of Churches Were Exposed

Aryeh Savir (TPS)

The World Council of Churches (WCC) announced on January 29 that it was pulling its “ecumenical accompaniers” from Hebron due to “security concerns.” Photo by Esty Dziubov/TPS on 18 February, 2019

The World Council of Churches (WCC) announced on January 29 that it was pulling its “ecumenical accompaniers” from Hebron due to “security concerns.”

The WCC’s flagship project, Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI), sends activists to Israel to “monitor” and “report human rights abuses.”

The program involves some 25-30 participants known as Ecumenical Accompaniers (EA) who operate on the ground for periods of three months, during which they work with fringe political anti-Israel organizations such as Be’Tselem and Breaking the Silence. EAPPI’s “extensive advocacy” includes sharing “first-hand experiences to open the eyes of their communities, churches and governments to the realities of occupation.”

The WCC’s activities have recently surfaced in the media, drawing fire from pro-Israel organizations over its illegal anti-Israel actions.

The exposure of the EAPPI’s illegal actions is the result of years of meticulous work and documentation.

Amit Barak, a resident of Nokdim in Gush Etzion and one of the Israeli operatives behind the EAPPI’s exposure, remembers first encountering them one Saturday in 2015.

It was on a Sabbath, and his wife called his attention to strangers in their backyard. Some he recognized as Israeli left-wing activists, but then he noticed foreigners wearing the EAPPI’s signatory brown vest.

They came every Saturday for five consecutive weeks, “to bother us, to make provocations, together with Israel radical left-wing organizations, together with Palestinian organizations,” he recalled.

After several such instances, “we decided to take the gloves off,” he said.

A local security official recalls receiving notification about suspicious-looking foreigners, possibly tourists, who were roaming around with maps. He arrived on site with IDF and police forces. The EAPPI activists presented themselves as “pilgrims” who were in the area for tourism. However, the maps they were carrying exposed them. They had detailed maps of the Israeli communities in the area with all sorts of markings and additional information, not tourism maps.

A search of their car exposed them as EAPPI activists, who had already gained a reputation as provocateurs. They were detained by the police.

Itai Reuveni, an NGO Monitor expert on anti-Israel activism, puts EAPPI into context.

Reuveni explained that “EAPPI is a project of the World Council of Churches, one of the biggest church organizations in the world.” EAPPI, Reuveni noted, is a project that sends “accompaniers” to areas of conflict in the world, but in practice, sends their activists exclusively to the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

While the stated goal for these activists is to observe and document human rights issues and report back to the church, “it’s a political project in disguise of human rights,” said Reuveni. EAPPI activists enter Israel on tourist visas, then dress in uniforms marking themselves as an official organization.

After following and documenting interactions between the Israeli army and Palestinians, these activists return to their home countries and lead anti-Israel campaigns, “most of the time with theologically anti-Semitic rhetoric.”

NGO Monitor, an independent research organization that tracks other non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that use the humanitarian banner as cover for anti-Israel activities, found a filmed lecture since deleted from the internet, of an EAPPI activist comparing Israel army actions in Hebron to Nazi gas chambers.

Reuveni adds that NGO Monitor documented two EAPPI activists using “extreme anti-Semitic” rhetoric on their social media accounts.

According to Reuveni, “This program is fully funded by European governments and European church organizations. All the organizations and governments know exactly what this program is doing.”

After the weeks of harassment from EAPPI activists, Barak founded the DMU project, a volunteer-based organization which is dedicated to exposing and documenting the illegal activities of anti-Israel operatives and providing the information to Israeli decision-makers and to the public.

Their reports show that EAPPI activists were involved in displays of support for terrorism. For instance, only days after the brutal terror attack at Halamish in July 2017 in which Omar al-Abed murdered Yosef Salomon, his daughter Chaya and son Elad, EAPPI activists visited the terrorist’s family.

In Gush Etzion, they work with Hassan Breijieh, spokesman for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terror group.

They know their activities in Israel are illegal, and deceive the authorities by portraying themselves as tourists and pilgrims, “using the name of Christianity,” as Barak explained.

Their activities to collect intelligence on Israeli security in the Jerusalem area were also exposed. From Jerusalem, they branched out to Hebron, where they documented the IDF’s operations.

“It’s very important to understand that they are [in Israel as] tourists, and for tourists, it is illegal to collect intelligence of military operations,” Barak underscores. “That’s what we found out they were doing in Hebron.”

“They are not a recognized organization in Israel, but they hire people, local informants, and in order to hire people they need some type of permits, and they get their permits through other organizations,” Barak added.

The reports were submitted to Israeli ministers and security officials.

The combined activities of the Israeli groups pressured the WCC into pulling its EAPPI activities out of Hebron, Barak said, while calling for their complete ban in Israel.

The WCC did not respond to TPS’ request for a comment.

ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE J STREET

JONATHAN (YONI) MICHANIE

Hoping to be identified as the “middle-ground,” J Street characterizes itself as the home of the “pro-Israel and pro-peace Americans.” But its inconsistent stances reflect only uncertainty.

A Star of David on a man’s kippa. (photo credit: REUTERS)

Since the 1937 Peel Commission, 16 peace offers have been made to the Palestinian leadership – and all have been rejected, most without a counteroffer. While the conflict itself is not short of historical complexities that have made the discussion of concessions difficult for both parties, those complexities have nonetheless always been objective.

Settlements were never the sole obstacle to peace, Israel was not responsible for the unfortunate creation of Palestinian refugees, and the Palestinian leadership has been a principal oppressor of the Palestinian people. While the suffering on both sides cannot be empirically compared or objectively measured, the history that created such complexities is not up for debate or interpretation.
But a significant problem at the table of negotiations has consistently persisted on behalf of the Palestinian leadership, a lack of clarity and a distorted approach to history which have led to the contemporary realities that predominate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The tactics employed by J Street, which are reliant on spreading uncertainty, represent this very same failed approach. This is not only leading to the further divide within the American Jewish community, but to the harming of productive conversations about the conflict.

Following the indisputably antisemitic remark by US Congressional Rep. Ilhan Omar, where she accused Jews of using their financial influence through AIPAC to safeguard American support for the Israeli government, J Street published a disturbing statement titled “Weaponization and Oversimplification of the Israel Debate Must End.” The content of the statement, which essentially condemned antisemitic remarks by US policy-makers while calling for nuance when discussing the conflict, was not as concerning as the timing of its publication. Using this statement to respond to Ilhan Omar’s notorious antisemitic trope, J Street aimed at creating more chaos and division at a time when the American Jewish community aches for unity.

However, following the organization’s statement after Airbnb’s discriminatory decision to boycott Jewish settlements in the West Bank, should we be surprised? The comments condemned criticism of Airbnb’s decision, claiming the occupation must be protested without truly addressing the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement or its ideology.

While rejecting global BDS (in reference to practice within Israel’s Green Line), J Street failed to condemn Airbnb’s clear double standard by singling out Jews in the West Bank. After all, Russia’s Crimea and Morocco’s Western Sahara were never targeted for the same accusations. Lack of clarity is J Street’s strategic approach to dividing the Jewish community in the US under the guise of progressive attitudes toward peace.

In an interview with foreign policy analyst Joshua Keating, J Street president Jeremy Ben Ami responded to Omar’s comments as follows:

“It’s the entirety of the argument that is overblown. What we’re losing sight of is the actual issues that we should be discussing. We’re debating whether a particular tweet or expression is antisemitic. The issues I would like to see a focus on are the occupation, the settlements and the question of whether we can end this conflict.”

IF THE leadership of the organization itself is unable to call out transparent antisemitism, how are they to be given any sort of legitimacy to address a conflict, which at its core is rooted in the refusal to recognize Israel as the rightful home of the Jewish people? While legitimate and proportional criticism of Israel should exist, J Street’s aim at nuancing antisemitism is unacceptable. Since the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1995, the Palestinian leadership has consistently violated the agreement by refusing to tear down its systematic indoctrination of antisemitism in the disputed territories.

The same lack of clarity, which has perpetuated the conflict and the consequential suffering that followed, serves as the same contributing factor to the rise of antisemitism in the United States. J Street’s audacity to label its national organization as “unequivocally Zionist,” while accepting Airbnb’s decision to boycott Jewish settlements in the West Bank – or by seeming to be incapable of releasing a comment solely dedicated to condemning antisemitic language in the US Congress – is nothing short of the same lack of clarity guiding the Palestinian Authority’s rejectionist policies.

Hoping to be identified as the “middle-ground” between both sides of the conflict, J Street characterizes itself as the home of the “pro-Israel and pro-peace Americans.” But its inconsistent stances reflect only uncertainty.

It is evident that the American Israel Council for Public Affairs (AIPAC) stands for bipartisan support of the American-Israeli relationship – one based not only on Zionist principles but on shared values and interests between both nations. And we know that Students for Justice in Palestine advocates for ethnic cleansing. It is just as transparent that American Muslims for Palestine serves as the megaphone for Hamas’s terrorist network in the US, and that Jewish Voice for Peace seeks to eliminate the Jewish character of Israel by supporting the claim to the full right of return for 5.2 million Palestinians (the large majority of whom have never set foot in Israel).

Whether Zionist or anti-Zionist, these organizations are at least transparent enough to be characterized not for the loss of Israel’s Jewish nature, but occasionally for being incapable of condemning organizations which condone Palestinian terrorism and violence. With several more of these inconsistencies, how exactly does J Street seek to be perceived? This uncertainty is cause for concern.

J Street has not just become a divisive factor for the Jewish community in America, it has also become an obstacle to productive discourse and possible reconciliation among the millions waiting for peace to be made. Distorting facts, revising history and disguising a policy of obscurity as neutrality has not only eliminated the organization’s claim to “seek a peaceful two-state solution,” but has also prolonged the harmful lack of clarity that plagues meaningful talks between prominent sectors of the American Jewish community.

The writer is a former IDF paratrooper, and an Israel advocate, public speaker, Middle East analyst, and campus coordinator for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA). He has a master’s degree in diplomacy and international security from IDC Herzliya.