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‘Remember al Nakba,’ too Israel celebrates its ‘Independence Day’ in May

by Janet Lahr Lewis Tuesday, May. 19, 2015 at 6:56 PM

Janet Lahr Lewis is Advocacy Coordinator for the Middle East at the United Methodist General Board of Global Ministries and she is Peace with Justice Program Associate at the General Board of Church & Society.


The creation of the state of Israel celebrated as "Independence Day" is celebrated in May. This is also the day that is remembered among Palestinians as al Nakba, the Catastrophe, when they lost Palestine.

This is an important time to remember, especially now that Israel has taken legal steps to wipe this event from the minds of its citizens and the world. Just as the Jews have made the world "Remember the Holocaust," we need to "Remember al Nakba."

I was working at Sabeel Theology Center in Jerusalem in 1998, the year of Jubilee for Israel: 50 years since its creation. The Year of Jubilee in Judaism is the year where everything is set right; a time for the release of the captives, justice for the oppressed, reconciliation among neighbors, and so on.

1998 was only a few years after the Oslo Accords, signed by the government of Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization, when we still had hopes that things would be set right. In contradiction to that sense of hope, we watched new checkpoints go up, new settlements begin construction, and the new Israeli-only bypass road system being built.

It became very clear that peace with justice was not on the horizon any time soon.

Worse than imagined

In the Jubilee year Sabeel hosted an international conference focusing on the 50 years since al Nakba. I don't think any of us expected that the situation would get worse than we could have ever imagined.
The importance of remembering those historic moments becomes even more critical.

Now, 67 years since al Nakba, and 48 years since the occupation began in the West Bank and Gaza, at a time when Israel and the Zionist movement around the world — even among members of our own churches — would like us to forget that part of history, the importance of remembering those historic moments becomes even more critical.

Israel has even gone so far as to destroy archaeological artifacts in an effort to wipe out evidence of non-Jewish cultures, except Roman, throughout history in the region.

I have seen it happen with my own eyes. I have challenged archaeologists on this. Ironically, there apparently is no written set of standards similar to those in engineering, for example, by which archaeologists can be held accountable.

Reclaiming the narrative, changing the politics, insisting on equal rights for Palestinians both in Israel and the West Bank and Gaza have become even more important, and now falls on the shoulders of the international community.

Extremist government

The "Israelis of conscience," who believe in equal rights for all people with whom we were working, are leaving Israel, fed up with their own extremist government. In Israel there is now a Right and an Extreme Right, because the Left has left. This new extremist Israeli government will create a new Exodus.

Let's not allow history to be changed or perverted by the elimination of events or the misuse of terminology.

There are always two sides to any coin.

Don't participate in Holocaust Remembrance Day without participating in Al Nakba Remembrance Day. Don't visit a Holocaust museum until there is one built to remember the other holocausts in the world: the on-going Palestinian holocaust, the Rwandan, the Native American, the Cambodian, the Armenian ... You could be waiting a long time!

The love of one does not automatically mean enmity towards the other.

God placed us on this earth to have life and have it abundantly — all of us.


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A Methodist Boycott of the Holocaust museum?

by Mark tooley Saturday, May. 23, 2015 at 9:55 AM

Recently a longtime United Methodist official, lamenting that Israel’s Independence Day obscured the Palestinian “Nakba” or catastrophe, urged boycotting the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. until the Palestinians have their own Holocaust museum.

Here’s the quote from Janet Lahr Lewis, “Advocacy Coordinator for the Middle East” at United Methodism’s General Board of Global Ministries in New York, and “Peace with Justice Associate” at the church’s General Board of Church and Society in Washington, D.C., in an article originally appearing in but now seemingly removed from the online weekly newsletter of the latter agency:

"Don’t participate in Holocaust Remembrance Day without participating in Al Nakba Remembrance Day. Don’t visit a Holocaust museum until there is one built to remember the other holocausts in the world: the on-going Palestinian holocaust, the Rwandan, the Native American, the Cambodian, the Armenian… You could be waiting a long time!"

How nice. Lewis also accuses Israel of having “gone so far as to destroy archaeological artifacts in an effort to wipe out evidence of non-Jewish cultures, except Roman, throughout history in the region.” She also claims that “Israelis of conscience” are quitting Israel, now controlled by an “extremist government” that’s creating “a new Exodus.” Mocking the Exodus story, a defining narrative of the ancient Hebrews, is another nice touch.


But Lewis’s boycott of the Holocaust Museum, and suggestion of “on-going Palestinian holocaust,” is of course far worse. Hitler’s mass murder of 6 million European Jews is unique in the annals of human horrors. Stalin and Mao likely killed more, and the Armenian and Cambodian genocides were appalling, the Rwandan genocide also, plus the Sudanese regime’s continuing homicides, not to mention at least half a dozen other similar crimes by governments over the last century.

But no sustained massacre in history was conducted across years with such deliberation and cold, mechanized efficiency, by a regime elected by the informed voters of an ostensibly civilized nation, as was the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews. It began with boycotts of Jewish businesses and expulsions of Jews from public life, escalated to expropriation of property and mass incarceration, continued towards mass shootings, suffocation by carbon dioxide in mobile vans, then finalized with daily gassing by the tens of thousands in death camps, where the bodies were delivered of gold teeth and hair, then were incinerated, filling the guilty land with the stench of burning human flesh.

What Israeli policies towards Palestinians merit the term “holocaust” much less rank with Hitler’s relentless death machine? Is it the security fence against Palestinian suicide bombers? Is it the occasional demolition of Palestinian homes suspected to belong to terrorists? Is it the security checkpoints? Is it the purchase of Palestinian land by Jewish settlers?

Can the term “holocaust” apply to the Palestinians killed in the recent Gaza war, when Israel reacted against Hamas rockets? Or Palestinians killed during intifadas orchestrated by Yasir Arafat as a negotiating tool when offers of a Palestinian state were insufficient for his political purposes?

Maybe the Methodist “missionary” and “peace with justice” advocate will explain what she means by “ongoing Palestinian Holocaust” in her next column. Except the United Methodist General Board of Church and Society has evidently deleted her last “holocaust” column, whether from shame or prudence. This Capitol Hill agency routinely demonizes Israel and for years has been trying to persuade its denomination to divest from Israel. But apparently it’s not ready to embrace openly a call to boycott the Holocaust Museum

Removing an absurd and disgusting column without public comment is not sufficient. This agency that represents United Methodism’s political witness to Congress should apologize. Its staff and board members should conduct a group visit to the nearby Holocaust Museum to be reminded why the Nazi murders of the Jews has special ranking in human depravity. And it, along with the United Methodist missions agency, should discontinue Lewis’s employment, to remove any doubt that her execrable views represent the denomination, and to demonstrate that the denomination aspires to some level of minimal moral seriousness. Ideally, this termination of employment would occur before her scheduled speech to a June 6 Methodist gathering in Des Moines, the title of which is: “Occupation: What It Is, What We Can Do about It, and Why We Should Care.”

Finally, hopefully, maybe Lewis’s unvarnished holocaust candor will ultimately provoke reflection by United Methodists and other Mainline/oldline Protestants as to why their officials and agencies have for several decades been so unremittingly hostile to Israel as the Jewish homeland, while scandalously silent about the real genocides that have occurred globally.

This ongoing, sour attitude towards the Jewish homeland, unequalled in negativity towards any other country or people, surely has a troubling spiritual explanation, which ought to send genuinely Christian people repentantly to their prayer closets in search of forgiveness and divine counsel.


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What "Holocaust"?

by What "Holocaust"? Saturday, May. 23, 2015 at 10:08 AM

What "Holocaust...
genocide.png, image/png, 600x600

Exactly what Palestinian "holocaust" or "genocide" is Janet Lahr Lewis referring to?

This kind of extremist rhetoric is precisely why the Methodists have become an irrelevant force in modern religion
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Janet Lahr Lewis works for Sabeel

by Just so you know Thursday, Jun. 04, 2015 at 11:21 PM

Janet Lahr Lewis worked for Naim Ateek for 12 years.
Yes," the Jews committed diacide" Naim Ateek.

Purest anti-Semitism, of the Medieval variety
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Janet Lahr Lewis lies

by Benjamin Friday, Jun. 05, 2015 at 10:35 AM

The slur that Israeli archaeologists purposefully destroy non Jewish archaeological remains is a flat out lie. I am a professional archaeologist (employed at East Carolina University) who has conducted archaeological research in Israel since the mid 80s. My research focuses on 18th to mid 20th Bedouin and on Palestinian villages located in the southern part of the country. I have NEVER been denied a survey and/or excavation permit based on the subject of my research. Furthermore, most of the archaeological excavations conducted on Palestinian villages is done in the context of salvage archaeology. The archaeologists who typically conduct this research are government employees who work for the Israel Antiquities Authority. The results of their fieldwork are published online and available for free to the public. The reality is that professional archaeologists can work freely in Israel and study any archaeological period, whether it is the Lower Paleolithic (1.8 mya) or the 20th century.
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Janet Lahr Lewis Reveal Ignorance

by CAMERA Friday, Jun. 12, 2015 at 7:42 AM

Janet Lahr Lewis serves as Advocacy Coordinator for the Middle East for the United Methodist Church's General Board of Global Ministries headquartered in New York City.

Lewis set off a firestorm of criticism in a piece that was published in a newsletter produced by the UMC. In the article, which has been removed from the UMC's website, but has been archived here, Lewis calls on people to boycott Holocaust remembrance museums “until there is one built to remember the other holocausts in the world: the on-going Palestinian holocaust, the Rwandan, the Native American, the Cambodian, the Armenian ... You could be waiting a long time!”

Lewis's assertion that there is an “ongoing Palestinian Holocaust” is false.

The Palestinian population has quadrupled since Israel's creation in 1948. The Palestinians are not victims of a genocide, as Lewis suggests.

Lewis also accuses Israelis of destroying “archaeological artifacts in an effort to wipe out evidence of non-Jewish cultures, except Roman, throughout history in the region.”

Here, Lewis is accusing Israeli archeologists of what Palestinians have done as they have created an underground mosques on the Temple Mount. They shipped the soil they removed off to the dump. An article published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs in 2002 reports the following:

After September 2000, [Muslim authorities] closed off the Temple Mount entirely to any archeological oversight by the Israel Antiquities Authority. Then, in order to complete new underground mosques at the site, it removed to city garbage dumps some 13,000 tons of rubble from the Temple Mount that included archeological remnants from the First and Second Temple periods.

The intention is to turn the entire 36-acre Temple Mount compound into an exclusively Muslim site by erasing every sign, remnant, and memory of its Jewish past, including the destruction of archeological findings that are proof of this past.

In a country where construction projects may be held up for months out of concern for the preservation of antiquities, the free hand given [to Muslim authorities] destroy Jewish artifacts at Judaism's holiest site is hard to comprehend.
To lend credence to her assertion that Israeli archeologists have destroyed historical evidence Lewis reports that “apparently is no written set of standards similar to those in engineering, for example, by which archaeologists can be held accountable.”

On this score, she is wrong.

Archeology in Israel is regulated by the Israel Antiquities Authority (the institution that Muslim authorities ignored when they destroyed historical evidence on the Temple Mount in 2000).

The IAA enforces Israel's antiquities law of 1978. Lewis's assertion that there is no “written set of standards … by which archeologists can be held accountable” ignores the existence this law and the bureaucracy charged with its enforcement.

In her article, Lewis revealed herself to be a propagandist who does not know what she is talking about.
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Are methodists pro-anti-semitism?

by Why no backlash? Sunday, Jun. 14, 2015 at 2:11 PM

Janet lahr lewis's anti-Semitic comments have not caused a backlash, leading many to wonder if the Methodists are pro-anti-Semitism

In a response seemingly supportive of anti-Semitism, the leadership of the Iowa Chapter of the Methodist Federation for Social Action (I-MFSA) has chosen not to distance the group from anti-Semitic remarks made by their keynote speaker before her participation in its June 6 program.

Janet Lahr Lewis, a missionary with the Board of Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church, was keynote speaker for the I-MFSA program held in conjunction with the Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church in Des Moines.

In a message posted to the official Global Ministries website on May 20, Janet Lahr Lewis called for boycotting Holocaust museums in anger over Israel. But targeting Jews everywhere for what Israel allegedly does is anti-Semitism.

She alleged that Israel was committing an ongoing holocaust of the Palestinian people. The analogy is false and defamatory. The charge implicitly likens Israelis to Nazis. Demonization of Israel is not criticism of Israel’s policies. It is anti-Semitism.

Lewis further implied that Jews were blocking the commemoration of genocides other than that of the Holocaust. This is not true.

Iowa-MFSA was alerted in advance about Lewis’ remarks as was Iowa Methodist Bishop Julius C. Trimble. Bishop Trimble, in a letter now online at http://bit.ly/1ELxSRK rebuked the anti-Semitism. By contrast, in a letter dated June 3, I-MFSA irresponsibly evaded the issue.

This is not about I-MFSA’s point of view on the Middle East conflict. It is solely about anti-Semitism, which cannot legitimately be used to further a political agenda. I-MFSA must repudiate the anti-Semitism of the keynote speaker. Until they do, the moral character of their organization will remain blemished, their silence passively abetting the promotion of anti-Semitism.

It is often said that “All that is necessary for evil to prevail is for good people to do nothing.” We call upon the I-MFSA and its supporters to now do the right thing.

— Mark Finkelstein, Jewish Federation of Greater Des Moines, and signed by all local congregational rabbis and presidents
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why should there be backlash?

by renaldo Thursday, Jul. 02, 2015 at 10:21 AM

The church hates the Jews, and the church hates the Jewish state.
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