Report: Palestinian pastor relays PA lies at Christ at Checkpoint
Evangelical leader let himself be used as "mouthpiece for some pretty dishonest propaganda."
By BENJAMIN GLATTUpdated: MARCH 8, 2016 11:56Jerusalem's Old City and the Temple Mount(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
A Palestinian pastor participated in an anti-Israel speech that was “defamation, pure and simple” at the Christ at the Checkpoint Conference on Monday, a media accuracy reporting blog wrote.Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac, who is ordained in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land, and who serves as the director of the biannual meeting in Bethlehem, “allowed himself to be used as a mouthpiece for some pretty dishonest propaganda,” the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America wrote.Isaac interpreted a speech by Hanna Amira – the Palestinian Authority’s chairman of the Higher Presidential Committee for Christian Affairs – who does not speak English.In his talk, Amira blamed Jerusalem for the recent wave of terrorism.“The Israeli government is giving the green light to the army and to the settlers to continue the acts of killing and attacking the Palestinian people, in particular, the children and the young and the women,” he said via Isaac. According to the Christ at Checkpoint brochure, the panel charges that its purpose is to challenge Evangelicals “to take responsibility to help resolve the conflicts in Palestine/Israel by engaging with the teaching of Jesus on the Kingdom of God.” The conference runs March 7-10, and is organized by the Bethlehem Bible College, a non-denominational Evangelical school.Amira also said that as Israel continues to commit crimes, Palestinians “have created a national non-violent resistance – [a] national peaceful resistance in our fight and in our struggle to achieve freedom and achieve peace and change the current circumstances and establish our Palestinian state.On CAMERA’s Snapshots blog, the organization writes that the Palestinians actions of late “are not actions that can be characterized as ‘non-violent’ and ‘peaceful resistance.’ They are acts of murder.”“By repeating Amira’s speech word for word, Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac helped obscure the problem of religious extremism that the conference was intended to confront,” CAMERA wrote.The Snapshots blog then surmises what would have happened had Isaac refused to continue interpreting for Amira.“Suppose [he told] both Amira and the audience ‘I can’t go on. This is just too much. I’m sorry.’ Suppose he did that. He’d be in a lot of trouble. He would have embarrassed an official from the PA in front of an audience of 300 foreigners (and a number of Palestinian security officials who were also in attendance). So Rev. Dr. Isaac continued on like a soldier, translating Amira’s speech, as propagandistic as it was, until the very end.”
The Bethlehem Bible College serves as the PA’s propaganda arm, the media accuracy organization wrote.“Today, on the first night of the 2016 Christ at the Checkpoint Conference, that reality was on display for those who had eyes to see and ears to hear.”The full blog can be read at: http://blog.camera.org/archives/2016/03/palestinian_pastor_helps_pa_of.html To learn more about Jewish-Christian relations, the building of the modern State of Israel, and the Jewish roots of Jesus, check us out at @christian_jpost, on Facebook.com/jpostchristianworld/ and see the best of the Holy Land in The Jerusalem Post - Christian Edition monthly magazine.