Christian Aid reaches new depths
For months the Palestinians have been firing rockets daily from Gaza into Israel. Today a spokesman from the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed wing of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement, said they had fired a rocket tipped with a chemical warhead at Israel. Whatever the truth of this claim, the situation is dire.
And then there is the Hamas-inspired murder of two Israeli soldiers and the kidnapping of a third, Gilad Shalit, from the Israeli side of the border, an act which precipitated the current Israeli military action. And then there is also the kidnapping and murder of 18-year-old Israeli Eliyahu Asheri, for which a senior Fatah member is the key suspect, and the possible kidnapping of another Israeli citizen too.
And then the realization that all of this is being orchestrated by the people who run the Palestinian Authority. As an Israeli Minister said of the Palestinian administration today, this is not a government but a murderous organization.
In all of this we might hope for some genuine Christian witness from Christian Aid, but instead we get the same old rhetoric condemning Israel for its military response but evading the issue of the terrorism which precipitated it.
Christian Aid has enjoyed unprecedented goodwill from churches in Britain who have supported its aid work in Africa and elsewhere. But its status as an aid charity seems increasingly hollow as it uses (or abuses) its position constantly to condemn Israel while giving an easy ride to the Palestinians who support suicide bombers and missiles targeting civilian populations.
If you are looking to donate money to a worthy charity, don’t go there.
