Sabeel: the Devil in Canada’s Churches
by Dr. Keith Roderick, Brigitte Gabriel, Jerome Gordon and Ted Belman
Shame on KAIROS - a Canadian coalition of 11 mainline Churches and agencies supported in part by the Liberal Martin government in Ottawa - for endorsing the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Center of Jerusalem (Sabeel) conference in Toronto.
KAIROS, a Canadian taxpayer funded 25 year old human rights consortium promotes a Palestinian State KAIROS, Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiatives purports to unite churches and religious organizations in a faithful ecumenical response to the call to -follow the precepts of Micah 6:8: “do justice, and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God” according to its own literature.
Sabeel, which is Arabic for “the way,” appeals to the unwary in the guise of being faithful Christians bearing witness to victims of oppression. In reality, Sabeel is under the influence of radical Islam. Founded by Anglican Canon Naim Ateek of Jerusalem in 1989 it is the transformation of Marxist leaning liberation theology in service to the Palestinian cause and anti-Semitism. Naim Ateek, ali Abuimah of the Arab American Action Coalition, Baylor University Jewish Studies scholar Marc Ellis and other Sabeel acolytes devote themselves to promoting hatred of Jews and Israel.
Sabeel describes itself as “an ecumenical grassroots liberation theology movement among Palestinian Christians”, which “hopes to connect the true meaning of Christian faith with the daily lives of all those who suffer under occupation, violence, discrimination, and human rights violations” and ” encourages Christians from around the world to work for justice and to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people.”
KAIROS partners with Sabeel, which, it writes, “strives to develop a spirituality based on justice, peace, nonviolence, liberation and reconciliation for the different national and faith communities. Sabeel also works to promote a more accurate international awareness regarding the identity, presence, and witness of Palestinian Christians. ”
Sabeel does this under the guise of being for a “non-violent peaceful resolution of the Middle East conflict.” Sabeel is really an instrument for demonizing and attacking Israel.
Based on previous Sabeel gatherings in the U.S. this fall, Canadian attendees at the KAIROS sponsored events can expect to see bizarre anti-Semitic imagery at these conferences. Witness the Torah in Jewish synagogues as the repository of helicopter gun ships leaping from the parchment scrolls aimed at Palestinians portrayed as the Crucified host. This is Christian heresy.
Sabeel and KAIROS have joined in the anti-Semitic, anti-Israel campaign.
Unlike mainline Church members of KAIROS, Dr. Charles. McVety President of Canada’s Christian College was clearly incensed in a Canada Free Press interview about the CIDA KAIROS Sabeel funding disclosures:
“It is outrageous that the Liberal {Martin] government would support a group that would call for divesting from Israel with $2.9 million of Canadian taxpayers’ money and side with the Palestinians.”
Dr. McVety is not alone in his outrage. We understand that Stockwell Day, leader of the opposition Progressive Conservative party in the Ottawa parliament has written ministers in the Liberal Martin cabinet requesting information and a response about the CIDA funding support for KAIROS.
KAIROS is aiding this hateful endeavor by hosting this conference at several liberal denominational churches in Toronto that are members of KAIROS.
Why are KAIROS and the CIDA supporting the Palestinians who are the oppressors of their Christian brothers?
In slavish adherence to the biased and anti-Semitic view of Sabeel, KAIROS has supported economic divestment by church endowments from companies doing business with the Jewish state of Israel for what it considers “morally justifiable” reasons. Such initiative is no more “morally justified” then attacking Israel as the root of all evil and ignoring the oppression by Arabs in general and Palestinians in particular of their fellow Christians.
Witness this comment from the KAIROS website drawn from the Canada Free Press article:
“Investment in such companies enables the government of Israel to sustain the ongoing violation of human rights of innocent civilians and “continuing such investments, once the facts are brought to our attention, constitutes deliberate condoning of the evil practices”.
The Presbyterian Church USA and several lesser liberal Protestant denominations in the U.S., members of the WCC, have passed resolutions at their synods or general assemblies over the past two years following the Sabeel proposals. The Episcopalians and other liberal Protestant denominations have temporized or held back from pushing divestment for now.
KAIROS supports this abomination while not uttering a whisper about the plight of tens of millions of Christians in peril from radical Islam throughout the Middle East, Sub Sahara Africa, Pakistan, and Indonesia.
Where was KAIROS when raging mobs of Muslim Brotherhood members broke windows, stabbed nuns at St. Michael’s Church in Alexandria? The riots left four dead, over 80 wounded and seven churches defaced . Under Islam’s Sharia law Christians and Jews are subjugated to an inferior status in society. Presently millions of Christians throughout the Near East are so affected. A comparable system would be the notorious Jim Crow Laws in the U.S. that subjected African-Americans to discrimination and humiliation.
Where was KAIROS when three Christian teenage girls in Sulawesi, Indonesia were beheaded by rampaging Muslims? Central Sulawesi and Puso has been the site of horrific sectarian warfare between Muslims and Christians since 2001 and 2002 when over 1,000 were killed?
Christians, animists and Black Muslim Darfurians, considered slaves by Arabs in the Sudan, were slaughtered in the millions in a two decade jihad officially over, but in fact still going on? Where was KAIROS? Where is KAIROS?
Where were KAIROS and Anglican Canon Naim Ateek, leader of Sabeel, when a Muslim “honor” killing was followed by a Muslim pogrom in a Palestinian Christian village in the West Bank, sacking and burning houses and assaulting men, women and children? Nowhere.
Where were these “good Christians” while Palestinian Christians were being reduced from 80% of the population of Bethlehem to less than 20% by Muslim ethnic cleansing? Where were they when Muslim terrorists invaded and desecrated the Church of Nativity.
Where was KAIROS, last year when the present Martin government in Canada violated international conventions on torture and deported several veterans of the Christian South Lebanon Army to imprisonment, torture and death at the hands of the Syrians in Lebanon?
KAIROS and Sabeel are part of the problem and not the solution. They exacerbate rather than ameliorate. Both KAIROS and Sabeel have duped Canadians and Americans into focusing on the plight of Palestinians rather than the plight of Christians. They promulgate the view that the problem in the Middle East is Israel’s “oppression” rather than Palestinian terror. It is the Palestinians who are their persecutors. The true victims in the Middle East are Christians and Jews who are the ones deserving of support by KAIROS and apparently the Canadian government.
Witness the suicide bombing by an operative from Palestinian terror group, Islamic Jihad recently in the Israeli coastal town of Hadera that caused the deaths of five innocent civilians, injuring and maiming more than two dozen others. Dexter Van Zile of the Boston-based David project heard Michael Tarazi, legal advisor to the Palestinian Authority at the Sabeel Conference in Denver discuss the status of the Arab/Israeli conflict. At his presentation, Tarazi suggested terror groups play a legitimate role in the conflict when he said, “If I see Abu Mazen cracking down on Hamas, I’ll ask what you are doing that for?” This is what KAIROS supports when it sponsors the Sabeel conference in Toronto and when it supports divestment.
What is “liberating” about the KAIROS and Sabeel programs? It is simply to seduce the gullible liberal Western Christians who believe that identifying with their cause will bring them spiritual and social justification, after all they are professing Christians and therefore are guilty of something.
This is the shame of KAIROS; the alliance with Naim Ateek of Sabeel and his hateful program, while ignoring the persecution of Christian minorities under daily oppression by radical Islamists.
This is the shame of Canada’s Liberal Martin government that supports this with taxpayer dollars.
The Rev. Canon Keith Roderick, D.D. is Secretary General of the Coalition for the Defense of Human Rights, the largest umbrella organization defending the rights of ethnic and religious minorities in the Islamic world.. Dr. Roderick is also the Washington Representative of Christian Solidarity International. Ms. Gabriel is a Lebanese Christian Arab, former Middle East news anchor and founder of American Congress for Truth (ACT). Mr. Gordon is a former U.S. military intelligence officer, and board member of ACT. Ted Belman is editor of ISRAPUNDIT.
