Episcopal Bishop Forced to Apologize After Making Up Israeli ‘Atrocities’

“I was ill-advised to repeat the stories without verification, and I apologize for doing so,” Gayle Harris, Suffragan Bishop for the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, stated. 

By: United with Israel Staff

Gayle Harris, Suffragan Bishop for the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, has apologized for presenting unsubstantiated atrocity stories against Israel during her church’s General Convention in July.

“The fault is solely mine,” she said in a statement issued Friday. “I was ill-advised to repeat the stories without verification, and I apologize for doing so,” she said.

Alan M. Gates, the Diocesan Bishop for the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, affirmed her apology, declaring, “We recognize that for Christian leaders to relate unsubstantiated accounts of Israeli violence awakens traumatic memory of a deep history of inciting hostility and violence against Jews—a history the echoes of which are heard alarmingly in our own day.”

In mid-July, Harris, the second-in-command at the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, testified in favor of the passage of a resolution that condemned Israel for alleged human rights abuses against Palestinian children. In her testimony, she described two terrible acts of Israeli villainy, and said “I was there” when they both happened.

She alleged that “a couple of years ago on the Temple Mount. A three-year-old little boy, a Palestinian with his mother, was bouncing a rubber ball. The ball happened to sort of roll away from him and go over the side down to the Western Wall otherwise known as the Wailing Wall. And immediately, Israeli soldiers camp up to the Temple Mount and attempted to put handcuffs on a three-year-old little boy — for bouncing a rubber ball.”

Not only was her testimony completely false, if she had actually been there, she would have known that the event she described is physically impossible.

She further alleged that “[she] was there when a teenager, I think he was 15, was walking down the street and asked a military vehicle, the Israeli government, a question and because that question was not one of the liking of those soldiers, he began to run as they threatened him and they shot him in the back four times he fell on the ground and they shot him another six.”

The Episcopal Church subsequently rejected the measure to divest from Israel, but five other resolutions critical of Israel were passed by the House of Deputies

‘Unverifiable and Unsubstantiated Atrocity Stories’

Harris’ “irresponsible use of unverifiable and unsubstantiated atrocity stories” prompted the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) to express their outrage to the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts.

In response to these complaints, the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts issued a statement earlier this month in which Harris admitted that she did not personally witness the events she described to her fellow bishops, but was passing on what she had heard from others during her trips to Israel.

Harris’s subsequent apology and Gates’s affirmation were issued, in part, in response CAMERA’s efforts to document the false and defamatory charges she leveled at a meeting of the Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops during the General Convention in July.

CAMERA stated that it “welcomes the positive statements of the bishops. Hopefully, Harris’s apology will serve as a springboard for better relations between the Episcopal Church and the Jewish community grounded in appreciation of the vital need to investigate the truth of any allegations made about the Jewish state.”

CAMERA added that it “hopes recent events will also prompt Episcopalians to examine what it is about their church’s culture that allowed Bishop Harris’s logically improbable and false statements about Israel to go unchallenged by her fellow bishops.”

“Perhaps her apology will also prompt other Christian groups engaged in peacemaking efforts to consider how their polemics make things worse and not better for the people affected by the Arab-Israeli conflict,” the organization concluded.

The move by the Episcopalians to reject divestment in July came just weeks after the Presbyterian Church USA passed several anti-Israel resolutions while also expressing support for the BDS movement at its General Assembly in St. Louis.

The Episcopal Church has previously rejected boycott efforts, while the United Church of Christ in 2015 and the Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) in 2014 voted to divest from companies they deem “complicit in the occupation.”

https://youtu.be/wMRl4py7KFo

Take the Red Pill - with Patrick Little

US senate candidate tells voters to ‘support the candidate that names the Jew’

Patrick Little, a White Supremacist Republican candidate for the US Senate in California, rants against the Jews and urges fellow anti-Semites to get his name out and support  him “against the Zionist b*tch” (Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein), absurdly claiming that he is “literally promising what Trump promised, and more.” The primary is set for June 5.

YNET: 'Entry forbidden to Jews' at Polish hotel Polish media reports anti-Semitic sign posted outside of hotel in the town of Cesarzowice; hotel owner is reportedly an extremist who has previously ignited controversy when he burnt an effigy of a religious Jew and was sentenced to prison.

A photo of an anti-Semitic sign hanging outside of a hotel in the town of Cesarzowice "Entry forbidden to Jews, Commies, and all thieves and traitors of Poland", said the sign.

• In nearby Wrocław, one of the largest cities in Poland, there was an anti-Semitic incident in November, 2015. Piotr Rybak, leader of the extremist "National Radical Camp", burnt an effigy in the figure of a religious Jew at an anti immigrant rally in a city square. According to one of the reports out of Poland, Rybak is the owner of the "The Polish House", the hotel, with the sign.

The sign

The website of the Anti Defamation League (ADL) stated that Rybak is in custody after anti-Semitic calls at a rally in Wrocław during an Independence Day celebration this month. Rybak was arrested after he violated his parole agreement after a two year trial for the events at the November, 2015, rally.

Last month, Rybak, who was indicted for incitement against Jews, managed to avoid a prison sentence of ten months. He was sentenced to three months of partial house arrest.

In light of the anti-Semitic sign, the ADL called on the Polish authorities to investigate the incident and take the necessary steps against the perpetrators.

UC Professor Tweets Anti-Semitic Propaganda

The pro-Israel StandWithUs advocacy organization expressed “outrage” Tuesday in response to new evidence documenting anti-Semitic hate messages being disseminated via social media by University of California at Berkeley Professor Hatem Bazian.

The UC Berkeley student group ‘Tikvah: Students for Israel,’ revealed in a statement that Bazian shared a tweet featuring deeply anti-Semitic language and imagery.

“It is unacceptable for a lecturer at a highly acclaimed and diverse university to be allowed to spew propaganda and discriminatory content, whether it is in the classroom or online. We are calling on the UC Berkeley to condemn Professor Bazian’s actions and hold him accountable for his Anti-Semitic behavior. We also expect a public apology and a pledge to attend sensitivity training by Professor Bazian.”“Tikvah, the Zionist Voice at UC Berkeley, condemns every form of Anti-Semitism and expects that people be held accountable for their actions. Professor Hatem Bazian, a lecturer at UC Berkeley’s Ethnic Studies Department, has shown his true colors after retweeting a truly revolting, Anti-Semitic tweet…” the student group wrote in a Facebook post.

“We urge the university administration to adhere to the UC Regents Principles Against Intolerance, and strongly condemn this vicious hate,” said StandWith Us.

“While this incident is deeply disturbing, it is unfortunately not shocking. This professor has a long history of promoting hate, including as the co-founder of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP)” Noa Raman, Pacific Northwest Campus Director for StandWithUs, continued.

“Now that he is sharing the kind of blatant anti-Semitism we usually see from alt right and far left extremists, it’s time for UC Berkeley administrators to stand up for their students and make a clear statement of condemnation.”

In past years Bazian has called for an “intifada” in America and trafficked in anti-Semitic tropes about Jewish power.

Bazian is also chairman of American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), which claims to be “the driving force behind activism for Palestine” in the United States and provides significant funding to various chapters of the international Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) organization.

AMP’s leaders and speakers have been exposed for engaging in racism, homophobia, support for terrorism, and genocide denial, according to StandWithUs.

ELDER OF ZIYON: Antisemites to give talk about "antisemitism" in NYC

In August I noted that "Jewish Voice for Peace" published a book on antisemitism that justifiessome kinds of antisemitism.

Now the people who passionately believe that the only people on Earth who do not have the right to self-determination are Jews are holding a conference to claim that the only kind of antisemitism that matters is that neo-Nazi type than can be blamed on the ultra-Right.



Leftist antisemitism, as we've seen in the British Labour party, is not antisemitism as long as the person spouting the hate claims - sometimes way after the fact - that they were only criticizing Israel.

The people who are speaking and claim to care about antisemitism are the exact kind of people who don't give a damn about antisemitism - they are only using Jews as pawns to demonize their political opponents.

Here are the speakers:

Leo Ferguson is the community and communications organizer for Jews for Racial & Economic Justice.
Lina Morales is a member of Jews of Color and Mizrahi/Sephardi Caucus of Jewish Voice for Peace.
Linda Sarsour is the former Executive Director of the Arab-American Association of New York, a co-chair of the National Women's March, and was a co-founder of MPower Change.
Rebecca Vilkomerson is the Executive Director of Jewish Voice for Peace.

Yes, suddenly Linda Sarsour is an authority on antisemitism. She is, but not for the reasons she claims.

Get ready for lots of talk about how Zionist call all critics of Israel antisemites (no, only the ones who actively seek the destruction of the only Jewish state)   and how there is suddenly much more neo-Nazi activity since Trump was elected (there isn't but the media is covering it much more.)

Meanwhile, here is your handy guide again for the differences between anti-Zionism and antisemitism.