In early March, an organization called the Telos Group is going to hold its annual leadership conference in Washington, D.C. Billing itself as an activist organization that is pro-Palestinian, pro-peace and pro-Israel, the Telos Group is allegedly promoting a new understanding of the Arab-Israeli conflict — an understanding that allows outsiders (Evangelical Protestants mostly) to embrace the flattering notion that they can somehow bring peace between Jew and Arab in the Holy Land.

It’s a naïve and arrogant view for people to embrace because it portrays the Israelis and the Palestinians as pawns that will do the bidding of well-meaning Christians from North America, as if the two groups of people are unable to discern for themselves the decisions they need to make for peace. Such a narrative denies the agency, intelligence and accountability of people in both Israel and in Palestinian society.

The condescension however, is mostly directed at the Palestinians. Examine the Telos Group’s website for yourself and you’ll find very little information about the antisemitic incitement in Palestinian society, nor will you see much condemnation of the corruption of Palestinian elites. By failing to hold Palestinian leaders accountable for their misdeeds, Telos Group activists reveal their underlying contempt for the Palestinians.

Noah Summers, an analyst writing in the Gatestone Institute has examined the organization and has documented some contradictions with the organization’s message. She writes that while Telos staffer Greg Khalil (pictured above) invokes UN Resolution 242 in a manner that obligates Israel to yield territory to the Palestinians, he “neglects to mention that this “land-for-peace” resolution was premised on the Palestinians halting all violence against Israelis and recognizing the State of Israel.”
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Death came for the Archbishop; it got a lot of press. When Hilarion Capucci, a Melkite Archbishop who spent two years in an Israeli prison for smuggling guns for the PLO, died on Dec. 31, 2016, the New York Times wrote about it.

So did the BBC, The Washington Post, and the Associated Press. Crux, the Boston Globe website dedicated to covering the Catholic Church, also covered Capucci’s death at the age of 94.

His death was lamented in a number newspapers in the Middle East as well.

The secular press covered Capucci’s death, but most, if not all, Catholic media outlets in the United States appear to have passed over the Archbishop’s passing in silence.

America Magazine didn’t cover the story. Neither did the National Catholic Reporter, nor did the National Catholic Register. And interestingly enough, the Catholic News Service made no mention of Archbishop Capucci’s death. CNS, did however, report about Capucci’s involvement in a Gaza flotilla in 2010. (Screenshots of efforts to find articles related to Capucci’s death on the websites of the outlets just listed are appended to the bottom of this entry.)
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Update: January 25, 2017

Yusef Daher has edited the Facebook post described below, deleting a link to an article from a fake news site that broadcast a lie about Israel’s President Reuvin Rivlin. Here is a screenshot of the post below.

CAMERA commends Daher for doing the right thing and calls on him to remove other hateful posts from his social media accounts. It’s what a peacemaker would do.

Here is the original post that drew attention to the fake news article on Daher’s Facebook page:

Yusef Daher just can’t help himself.

Daher, who works as executive secretary of the Jerusalem Interchurch Center, an ecumenical “peacemaking” organization supported by the World Council of Churches, has a nasty habit of posting ugly anti-Israel propaganda on his Twitter and Facebook accounts. For example, in January 2016, he posted a picture an Israeli soldier getting kicked in the rear end by Jesus who is hanging on the cross.

And on October 13, 2015, Daher posted a picture that lionized Palestinian rock throwers. (Snapshot readers can read more about Daher’s habit of posting hateful images here and here.)

Posting images like this is in direct contradiction to Daher’s status as part of the ecumenical peacemaking community in Jerusalem supported by the World Council of Churches. Instead of promoting peace, Daher posts images that incite hostility toward Israel. CAMERA has prepared two articles about Daher’s work, but the World Council of Churches has not responded publicly to Daher’s postings, nor has Daher himself refrained from posting anti-Israel propaganda.

He’s still at it.
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On our main website, we recently posted an article about a poll of Palestinian public opinion conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research headquartered in Ramallah.

The poll, which hasn’t gotten much attention in the English-speaking media, offers some pretty discouraging information. It reveals that 62 percent of the respondents interviewed want to abandon the peace process as enunciated by the Oslo Accords and that 53 percent of respondents support an armed intifada against Israel.

The report also shows that more than 70 percent of the respondents want Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority, to step down. Palestinians do not want Abbas as their president. This raises serious questions about the prospects for peace at least in the near term. Palestinians have apparently given up on a two-state settlement, support violence against Israel and do not support the presidency of the man Israel is supposed to negotiate with.

For one reason or another, this poll has not gotten much play in the international media, probably because it highlights the problems in Palestinian society that hinder the prospects for peace. Problems such as incitement, a refusal to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist, corruption in the Palestinian Authority, and a crisis of legitimacy suffered by Mahmoud Abbas, contradict the “It’s all Israel’s fault” narrative that has taken root in many newsrooms and think tank offices.

Just to get a sense of how taboo the subject of Palestinian intransigence and hostility is, take a look at the image posted above. Yes, it’s kind of grainy and disorienting, but it documents just how deep the denial goes.
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Earlier this week, Harry’s Place (hurryupharry.org) reported that IVP, an Evangelical publishing house announced that it would no longer publish books written by the controversial anti-Zionist Rev. Dr. Stephen Sizer, an Anglican priest from England. As of this writing, (November, 21, 2016) the website is down, but information about IVP’s decision can be found at this link.

IVP reported to Harry’s Place the following:

“The Stephen Sizer books have been in print for over 10 years and we understand and are very mindful of the sensitivities around this subject and author. We have decided to remove these titles from our list and the rights have reverted back to the author. Our website no longer lists these titles, though book retailers may well still be carrying stock and online retailers will continue to list these books for unsold and second-hand copies.”

Upon learning of IVP UK’s decision, CAMERA called InterVarsity Press in the U.S. to see if it would follow the decision of its sister publishing house in England.

The answer is yes. InterVarsity Press has stated that it will not be printing any more copies of the book and that the rights have reverted to the author. Sizer’s books have been officially declared out of print by their American publisher.

CAMERA lauds both IVP and Intervarsity Press for this decision. Sizer is the author of two virulently anti-Israel texts about the Arab-Israeli conflict. The first is Christian Zionism: Road Map to Armageddon? which was published in 2004. The second text is Zion’s Christian Soldiers: The Bible, Israel and the Church which was published in 2007. In the 2004 book, Sizer encouraged his readers to check out a news article that suggested Israel was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. He later denied that he thought the Israelis were involved in the attack.

For more background about Rev. Dr. Sizer’s work, please read articles here and here. For more information about Inter-Varsity Press in England, and InterVarsity Press in the United States, please read this article.

November 22, 2016 Update: Sizer’s books remain on IVP America’s website because they are a few copies of both books left in the warehouse. The texts however have been declared out of print and the rights have reverted back to Stephen Sizer. The books will soon no longer be available for sale on the house’s website.

The Dubai Entertainment and Media Organization, which runs the Dubai Film Festival, co-produced Leila Sansour’s film “Open Bethlehem,” which was recently shown at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston as part of the Palestine Film Festival. Dubai, the largest city in the United Arab Emirates, is well known for employing foreign workers in slave-like conditions. (Screenshot from DVD.)

This past weekend, The Palestine Film Festival hosted a showing of “Open Bethlehem: A Big Film About a Small Town” at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

The film is a documentary produced by Leila Sansour, a pro-Palestinian activist who spent her childhood in the city.

The film, which was shown at the MFA on Saturday, October 29, 2016, is about what you can expect from pro-Palestinian human rights activists. It highlights the impact of the security barrier on the residents of Bethlehem without providing any detail about the suicide bombings that prompted its construction early in the last decade. The movie is intended to make Israel look bad and the Palestinians to look innocent. (Apparently, we should all know by now that nothing is ever the fault of the Palestinians.)

Die-hard anti-Israel activists will love the movie, but as a source of usable and meaningful information about the Arab-Israeli conflict and the choices Palestinians must make for their lives to improve, the movie fails, and fails miserably.

The film, which lasts 90 minutes, is pretty self-referential, to the point of narcissism. It’s all pretty underwhelming. Nevertheless, the film got a four-star review from The Guardian in 2014.
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The World Council of Churches, a Christian ecumenical institution with a long history of beating up on Israel while giving jihadists and killers like Syrian President Bashar al Assad a pass, has invited an antisemitic conspiracy theorist to lecture at an upcoming celebration of interfaith dialogue at an event held near the WCC’s headquarters in Switzerland.

The event will take place at the WCC’s Bossey Institute, located outside of Geneva. The speaker is His Excellency Professor Dr. Ahmad al-Tayyeb, Grand Imam and Shayk of al-Azhar University.

His lecture, titled “The Responsibility of Religious Leaders for Achieving World Peace,” will take place at 4 p.m. on Saturday October 1, 2016.

Tayyeb’s talk is part of the Bossey Institute’s celebration of 70 years of interfaith dialogue at the institution which describes itself as the “international center for encounter, dialogue and formation of the World Council of Churches (WCC).”

For a man asked to speak about the role religious leaders can play in promoting “peace” Tayyeb has said some pretty hateful things.
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There are a lot of problems with a recent “peacemaking” document produced by the United Church of Christ “peace” activists, but one problem stands out like a sore thumb — it highlights the work of “If Americans Knew” an organization that has been denounced by the far-left group Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP).

The document is produced by the United Church of Christ Palestine Israel Network (UCC PIN), which is affiliated with the Massachusetts Conference of the United Church of Christ. (The Massachusetts Conference processes donations to the UCC PIN.) Titled “Promoting a Just Peace in Palestine-Israel: A Guide for United Church of Christ Faith Leaders,” the text purports to educate UCC pastors about the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Predictably, the document omits crucial information that reasonable people would need to know about the Arab-Israeli conflict before expressing an opinion about it. For example, the text describes Israel as having “conducted full-scale bombardments of Gaza in 2008, 2012 and 2014” without even mentioning the rocket attacks that preceded these wars.

Moreover, the word “Hamas” appears nowhere in the text, which is so indifferent to violence against Israel that it seems as if it is produced with the intent of sparking outrage on the part of American Jews and their leaders.
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The New York Times offered its readers some excellent reporting about anti-Christian violence in Egypt. In a piece by Rod Nordland published on Sept. 4, 2016, the Times recounts the ongoing violence against Coptic Christians in Egypt and details the varying responses that this violence elicits from different parts of the Coptic Orthodox Church.

The article, titled “Egypt’s Christians Say They Are at a ‘Breaking Point’” also provides details about how the Sisi regime in Egypt is trying to manage the public relations crisis anti-Christian violence presents to the government.

The article opens with a quote from Imam Mahmoud Gomaa, a Muslim cleric who has been appointed to “keep the peace” in upper Egypt, the scene of regular acts of anti-Christian violence perpetrated by mobs of angry Muslims. “Everything is good,” he said.

Then, Nordland reports about how Bishop Makarios said “just a few hours later” that he has “nothing to do with Mahmoud Gomaa.” It’s a brutal counterpoint to of Gomaa’s dissembling.

The stark difference in viewpoints between Gomaa and Makarios sets the tone for the rest of the article, which reports that Christians in upper Egypt have “suffered violence and humiliation at the hands of local mobs. “Houses have been burned, Copts attacked on the streets and hate graffiti written on the walls of some churches,” Nordland reports adding that “the turning point came in May when an older Christian woman was stripped naked by a mob…”

A few paragraphs later, Nordland returns to Imam Gomaa. “’No one has been killed,” the imam reports. “No one has been wounded. There’s no conflict. The problem is really with the journalists writing about it.”
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In June, Israel arrested Mohammed El-Halabi, director of World Vision’s operations in Gaza. World Vision, as most Snapshots readers know, is a Christian charitable organization that seeks to improve child welfare throughout the world.

Today, the story broke that Halabi is charged with siphoning funds and materials intended to help children in the Gaza Strip and redirecting these funds and goods to the terror organization Hamas. The news is shocking. But there’s one aspect of the charges against Halabi that has not got much play: Halabi allegedly used his status as a World Vision employee to spy for Hamas. A statement issued by the Israeli government detailing Halabi’s alleged crimes includes the following passage:

In addition to the financial and logistical aid that El-Halabi provided Hamas, he also exploited his visits to Israel, which were permitted due to his legitimate work for World Vision, to engage in serious terrorist activity – locating and marking [via GPS] sites near the Erez Crossing that potentially could be used as egress points for Hamas attack tunnels.

If this allegation is true, it indicates that Halabi used his status as an employee of an NGO to spy on behalf of a terror organization.