"The headline is incredibly misleading. It completely reverses the point I was making. Rather than highlighting my explicit distinction between Zionist organizations and Jewish partners in justice, it collapses that distinction and leaves readers with the false impression that I accused British Jews collectively of complicity in Israel’s crimes. This is precisely the kind of framing that has made speaking about Palestine so difficult for so many years. It is not only manipulative; it fuels the false narrative that criticism of Israel is criticism of Jews." Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac - Jul 23, 2026

 When Headlines Distort the Truth

What The Telegraph Got Wrong About My Response

Munther Isaac

Jul 23, 2026

“Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac is Director of the Bethlehem of Institute for Peace and Justice and co-author of Kairos Palestine II.

I was recently approached by The Telegraph, a newspaper in the United Kingdom, to comment on the Church of England’s recent decision to receive and engage with Kairos Palestine II, among other Palestinian Christian documents. I was also asked to respond to the criticism directed at the Church by the Board of Deputies of British Jews. 

 

READ THE LETTER 

Now notice something important. I clearly distinguished between those promoting Zionism and the many Jewish voices working for justice. In fact, I explicitly called on churches to listen to and amplify those Jewish voices. That distinction was not incidental—it was central to my response.

So what did The Telegraph do with it? It published the following headline: “British Jews complicit in Israel crimes, say Palestinian Christians.”

That is simply not what I said. It is not what Kairos Palestine II says. It is not what Palestinian Christians are saying.

The headline is incredibly misleading. It completely reverses the point I was making. Rather than highlighting my explicit distinction between Zionist organizations and Jewish partners in justice, it collapses that distinction and leaves readers with the false impression that I accused British Jews collectively of complicity in Israel’s crimes.

This is precisely the kind of framing that has made speaking about Palestine so difficult for so many years. It is not only manipulative; it fuels the false narrative that criticism of Israel is criticism of Jews.

Our position has been clear and consistent. The problem is not Jews. The problem is not Judaism. The problem is support for oppression, occupation, apartheid, and now genocide—whether that support comes from Jews, Christians, Muslims, or anyone else.

Likewise, those standing for justice include Jews, Christians, Muslims, and people of no faith. As I said in my response, and as Kairos Palestine II explicitly affirms, we welcome and encourage partnership with Jewish voices committed to truth and justice.

Perhaps most troubling of all, this kind of reporting distracts attention from the real issue. Instead of engaging with the catastrophe unfolding in Gaza, or with the overwhelming evidence presented by international legal, human rights, and medical bodies, the conversation is redirected toward a manufactured controversy... READ MORE https://bipj.substack.com/p/when-headlines-distort-the-truth?r=62vmcy&triedRedirect=true

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In a political wasteland dominated by billionaires, war criminals and mega-corporations, the head of the Catholic church is a rare figure of moral leadership

Pope Leo presides over mass at Vatican City, 29 June 2026. Photograph: Maria Grazia Picciarella/Shutterstock

Simon Tisdall: "Leo is not just talk. He has a plan. Presiding over a “consistory” – a rare gathering of all the Catholic church’s cardinals – in Rome last weekend, he sought to tighten up the just-war theory of St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas that is frequently hijacked to legitimise so-called preventive wars of choice. Leo argues war is only morally justified for “proportional self-defence”, and only after all peaceful options are exhausted. “War is never worthy of humanity, and it is never blessed by God,” he told the cardinals. “War is not merely a conflict between states”, but originates in “a culture of power”. The world must “rebuild a culture of cooperation”.

This struggle for the soul of today’s newly adversarial world order has drawn in Islamic and Jewish religious leaders and thinkers as well as other Christian denominations. Sarah Mullally, the newly enthroned archbishop of Canterbury, defiantly urged “faithful resistance” to Israel’s expanding occupation when meeting Palestinian Christians in the West Bank last month. The international community had a “moral responsibility” to relieve profound suffering there and in Gaza, she wrote in a pastoral letter – and the time to act was now. Middle East conflicts were “symptomatic of a deeper political and spiritual crisis – an abandonment of international law and an increasing recurrence of military force”.

It’s not necessary to be a person of faith to value truth, justice and human decency" .... READ MORE   https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jul/05/world-leaders-immorality-pope-leo-war-criminals-corporations-catholic-church

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The immorality of world leaders is contagious. Thank heavens for the pope

Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt's 1948 letter to the New York Times: They saw the creation of a Jewish ethnostate in Palestine at the expense of its indigenous Muslim and Christian population as a profound injustice and moral catastrophe. Einstein and the other signatories explicitly compared Begin’s Herut (Freedom Party), born from the Irgun, to Nazis and Fascists, warning that their ideology of racial superiority and violent ethnic nationalism posed a grave danger to the moral and political future of the new state.

https://x.com/mazzenilsson/status/2058596779835469875/photo/1

    

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https://archive.org/details/AlbertEinsteinLetterToTheNewYorkTimes.December41948/page/n2/mode/1up 

Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt's letter to the New York Times: December 2, 1948 

Signed by Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, Sidney Hook, Rabbi Jessurun Cardozo, Irma Lindheim, and 22 other Jewish scholars, writers, and public figures. (Published December 4, 1948, in The New York Times.)

"At a moment when Islam is framed as a source of division, it is worth recalling that on his pilgrimage to Mecca in 1964, Malcolm X encountered Muslims of all races, worshipping as equals together, an experience that transformed his understanding of race and human dignity. It revealed an Islam grounded not in fear, but universality, exposing the poverty of racial hierarchies and the distortions that sustain them." Kenneth Mohammed in The Guardian

Mecca, Saudi Arabia

Muslim worshippers perform dawn prayers at the Grand Mosque before the start of the annual hajj pilgrimage Photograph: Saudi Press Agency/APAImages/Shutterstock 

The real danger of Islamophobia? It rarely announces itself as hatred yet shapes how millions think

Kenneth Mohammed

 

 The difference in framing around antisemitism and anti-Muslim hatred distorts public understanding, inflames tensions and makes both Jewish and Muslim communities less safe

The horrific terrorist attack on the Islamic Centre of San Diego in California has been reported by many news outlets over the past few days. Yet as the story travelled across screens and news feeds, something more subtle unfolded: the language of reporting. Some outlets spoke of “teen suspects” and “three deceased” rather than murdered worshippers or a terrorist attack on a mosque. Words matter. They shape sympathy, urgency, and influence how violence is understood. Too often, the vocabulary of terror and extremism appears unevenly distributed; sharpened for some perpetrators but softened for others.

There is a growing sense that the world is slipping backwards – not through dramatic rupture, but through the steady normalisation of hate, the coarsening of public discourse and politicians increasingly fuelling division and racism.

Across the world... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/may/25/danger-islamophobia-antisemitism-hatred-anti-muslim-abuse

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"...More troubling still is how sections of the media shape perception through selective framing and omission. A recent arson attack was widely reported as targeting a “former synagogue”, implying antisemitism while omitting that it was the subject of a fundraising effort by local young Muslims, who had already put down a hefty deposit to tranform the building into a mosque and community centre.

The problem is not whether antisemitism or anti-Muslim hatred exist – both plainly do. It is that selective framing distorts public understanding, inflames tensions and ultimately makes both Jewish and Muslim communities less safe. Today, where perception increasingly shapes reality, omission can be as powerful as misinformation itself..."

Zohran Mamdani is rewriting the political rules around support for Israel. If support for Israel is no longer de rigueur in New York, it may soon not be obligatory in Washington. That is good news for Palestinians - by Kenneth Roth in The Guardian

‘The political shift on Israel that Mamdani’s victory represents should be a wake-up call for the Netanyahu government.’ Photograph: Lev Radin/Shutterstock

 Kenneth Roth

Thu 27 Nov 2025 06.00 EST

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu should be quaking in his boots at the decisive victory of Zohran Mamdani in the 4 November New York City mayoral election. Not because of absurd allegations of antisemitism for which there is no evidence, but because Mamdani has broken the longstanding taboo for successful New York candidates against criticizing the Israeli government. And he has only reinforced his approach in the month since his election.

New York has the largest Jewish population in the United States – and the second-largest of any city in the world after Tel Aviv. The longstanding assumption was that many Jewish voters prioritized the defense of the Israeli government over other issues, so criticism of Israel would set them against a politician.

Mamdani blew that assumption out of the water. During the campaign he spoke accurately and openly about the genocide that Israel was committing in Gaza. He insisted that all residents of Israel should have equal rights. He said he would arrest Netanyahu were he to show up in New York. Yet one-third of New York’s Jewish voters cast a ballot for him. As did many others.

Some Jews may have been uncomfortable with Mamdani’s criticism of Israel but liked other aspects of his candidacy, such as his relentless focus on affordability. Others, myself included, were attracted by his candor on such an important issue as Israel. Many were also probably appalled by the efforts of Mamdani’s principal opponent, Andrew Cuomo, to tar Mamdani with fact-free allegations of antisemitism.

Mamdani has only continued his openness on Israel since the election... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/nov/27/zohran-mamdani-israel-us-support

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Dear America- Israel has a right to exist, but Israel has no right to starve and displace the men, women and children of historic Palestine.

𝐅𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐮𝐬 𝐓𝐞𝐫𝐫𝐚𝐞 𝐒𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐭𝐚𝐞 ♱

letter I just sent to my elected leaders 

Dear America,

I am a Christian, born and raised to love and to care for others.

As a Christian, and an American, I firmly object to the corporate greed and corruption that are destroying America's democracy.

Furthermore, as a Christian and an educated human being, I object to our elected leaders funding and arming Israeli bigotry and injustice with America's wealth and weaponry. 

We give billions and billions of dollars to Israel annually, while many Americans can't afford to feed their own children.

As a Christian who has been married to a Muslim man for decades, a good man who treats me well and has worked hard to take care of our family, I also vehemently object to the bigotry and injustice being fomented here in America, and in Israel, against Arab Christians, Muslims, and Jews.

I grew up in the 1960s in an America when full equality and legal respect for Blacks was a new thing.  I was very lucky because my mother, my church, and my school all promoted diversity- an end to segregation, and an end to racist hate and injustice.  I went to school with all types of people, every religion and color, and we learned to get along.  Diplomacy matters... and so does international law.

FYI Israel has been violating international law in multiple ways time and time again.  

International law was created because of the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust.  After WWII the United Nations & the Universal Declaration of Human Rights made it clear how to build a better future for all people.  

Israel used international law to gain power, and Israel is now is actively sabotaging international law- especially UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.  https://www.unrwa.org/unrwa-claims-versus-facts-2025 

Israel's puppets in America's Congress have cut funds to UNRWA and to UNESCO.  Meanwhile Israel's current cat's-paw Trump has cut U.S. aid projects internationally and also cut programs for America's children, while generously supplying the Zionist empire with oodles of lethal weaponry and political support.

Israel is not a Christmas Carol or the answer to a prayer:  Israel is a heavily armed, home demolition, job destroying propaganda savvy killing machine. 

Israel insists on arming bigotry and funding religious extremism. There are no borders to stop Israeli aggression and land grabs. Israel steals land and peace from indigenous Arabs, including Indigenous Christians in the land of Jesus Christ's birth.

Israel has a right to exist, but Israel has no right to starve and displace the men, women and children of historic Palestine.

Sincerely,

Anne Selden Annab

NOTES https://anniesnewletters.blogspot.com/search/label/Notes

‘Olives are everything for us’: West Bank farmers prevented from harvesting by settler violence... About 70% of town’s olives are inaccessible without risking a potentially fatal clash with Israeli settlers

The grim task of recovering thousands of bodies from the rubble of Gaza. Relatives and experts tell of the human and societal need to find and identify the dead, while images and data shed light on the scale of the job

‘We don’t feel safe’: after week of bombings, people in Gaza are losing faith in ceasefire- After initial enthusiasm, people fear ceasefire does not mean end to war but just less frequent, more unpredictable [ISRAELI] violence

Children attending UNRWA temporary learning spaces in Gaza express their joy at learning in person and their hope that it will last. While most schools have been damaged or still host displaced families, UNRWA was able to quickly re-open 38 new temporary learning spaces in Khan Younis between September and October 2025. This has more than doubled the number of children reached through in-person learning compared to August levels. All children should be able to go to school. #UNRWAworks

“International law is clear: States must neither aid nor assist in the internationally wrongful acts of others, and must prevent & punish international crimes." New report “Gaza Genocide: A Collective Crime"

"Families buried under rubble, hospitals struck, and deliberate starvation of an entire people are not isolated mistakes. They are the product of a system driven by power, sustained by impunity, and empowered by propaganda..." World leaders cannot claim to seek peace while enabling war and ignoring human suffering

"Admirers from UNICEF leaders to Hollywood actors have praised her for saying what many politicians won’t. Critics, meanwhile, accuse her of politicizing childhood. She doesn’t flinch. “I have to just remind myself that kids’ lives are more important than my reputation,”" Ms Rachel, Glamour magazine's Women of the Year

Another Palestinian journalist killed by ongoing ISraeli bombardment. Muhammed al-Miniarawi was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Nuseirat regfugee camp in the central Gaza Strip. October 29, 2025

"Imagine slashing SNAP, the program that helps children in the U.S. not go hungry- while sending billions in weapons to another country to kill other children" Ms Rachel for Littles

Let UNRWA aid in... Lifesaving UNRWA medicines are waiting at the border, denied entry into Gaza by the State of Israel.

Meanwhile, pre-positioned outside Gaza, UNRWA has enough food parcels for 1.1 million people, flour for 2.1 million individuals, and shelter supplies for up to 1.3 million people."

"Maybe you don’t believe that we’re still starving in Gaza. So far: no enough food no meat, no chicken, no eggs at all no medicine." Israel's broken promises... AID ENTERING GAZA DURING CEASEFIRE: ACTUAL vs AGREED

Genocide is not a matter of opinion: 300+ writers, scholars & public figures refuse to write for the New York Times Opinion section in a collective effort to hold the paper accountable for its role in the genocide in Gaza.

The Catholic Church of Maalul, Nazareth remains standing despite the village’s destruction in 1948 and the expulsion of its people. Today, Maalul is an Israeli military zone, but its original inhabitants visit the church on special occasions or to commemorate their history.

"Across Palestine, the olive trees are disappearing, burned, cut, and uprooted by Israeli settlers, often under military protection. In Gaza, tens of thousands of dunums of farmland have been leveled, destroying nearly a million olive trees, some that had stood for centuries. Families are attacked or blocked from reaching their groves, their livelihoods erased before their eyes. Yet every year, people still go to harvest, even among the ashes and stumps, to remember that the land is theirs. When the trees are gone, they still reach, as an act of resistance." Sliman Mansour of Palestine

Two photographs nearly identical, as if captured on the same day. One in black and white, the other in color. Yet between them stretches seventy-seven years. The first taken after the Nakba of 1948. The second after the Nakba of 2023..

"It is sad and painful that you come to these Holy Lands for an unholy purpose and that is to adhere to the [Israeli] occupation, its oppressive policies and practices against the Palestinian people" ... "How can a Christian ignore the suffering of the Palestinian people especially what happened during the two years in Gaza which was a War of Holocaust." Theodosios Atallah Hanna, Palestinian Archbishop of Sebastia from the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, in an open letter to US Vice President JD Vance

Foreign journalists are still not allowed in Gaza & Israeli Settlers nearly club a Palestinian woman to death in the West Bank ... Arwa Mahdawi

"What’s urgently needed now is a UN-sponsored international criminal tribunal for Gaza, modelled on those in former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. It should be empowered to examine all aspects of Israel’s and Hamas’s conduct of the war, especially their shared disregard for civilian lives and their killing, torture and mistreatment of hostages and detainees." Simon Tisdall in The Guardian

Israel’s parliament has passed a bill advancing the annexation of the occupied West Bank, a blatant violation of international law... & "Barely a mention in Western media." Assal Rad

“For 80 years, we have worked to forge peace, tackle poverty & hunger, advance human rights & build a more sustainable world – together.” On Friday's #UNDay, @antonioguterres urges people to unite & fulfil the extraordinary promise of the United Nations... The creation of @UN was the result of a global commitment to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war." 80 years later, the UN remains essential for advancing peace, prosperity & human rights. #UN80

The International Court of Justice opinion is clear: UNRWA must be allowed to deliver aid

ICJ orders Israel to allow aid into Gaza and says restrictions breached international obligations. UN’s top court also finds Israel failed to justify blocking Unrwa and other relief agencies

An estimated one million of Gaza’s 1.1 million olive trees have been destroyed. Prior to the genocide Gaza produced 50,000 tons of olives annually.

Jewish figures across the globe call on UN and world leaders to sanction Israel . Exclusive: In an open letter, Israeli ex-officials, artists and intellectuals say ‘unconscionable’ actions in Gaza amount to genocide.

#BetterTogether: The United Nations... "Together, we promote peace & security, advance sustainable development & protect human rights. By uniting nations, we turn shared goals into collective action." LET UNRWA AID IN: "UNRWA has the reach, network, and trust to deliver lifesaving aid directly to people in need"

"In September, 2023—just before October 7th—the United Nations published a report about a spike in Israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestinian communities in the West Bank. During the past two years, we’ve seen the situation in the West Bank get even worse. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been pushed out of refugee camps. And dozens of Palestinian pastoral communities have been wiped off the map. Their inhabitants have been forced off their land by a combination of settlers and the Army, which are often indistinguishable from each other. So when we’re talking about ethnic cleansing, or an Israeli desire for ethnic cleansing, we shouldn’t talk about it purely in this future hypothetical way. It’s happening on a smaller scale every day." Isaac Chotiner

"There are now, as the historian Rashid Khalidi has put it, “two peoples in Palestine, irrespective of how they came into being”, and their “mutual acceptance can only be based on complete equality of rights”. If that sounds utopian, it is largely because of the decay of political leadership in both Israel and Palestine. Whatever happens with the Trump plan, no amount of bulldozer diplomacy or external governance will alter that." Kenan Malik

Humanitarian principles & UNRWA

UNRWA has the reach, network, and trust to deliver lifesaving aid directly to people in need across Gaza. To meet urgent needs, let UNRWA bring in its aid to Gaza at scale. Let them do their job.

"This is a UN vehicle entering Gaza today. It looks like a scene in a dystopian movie." Assal Rad

‘One of the oldest urban centres on the planet’: Gaza’s rich history in ruins. The territory’s ancient heritage has too often been ignored. As we mourn incalculable human losses, learning about its past can help us better understand the present- William Dalrymple in The Guardian

Dear America- The vast majority of Americans are not wealthy & the taxes that We The People pay are being diverted into funding religious bigotry and terror via Israel's cruel war on the native non-Jewish men, women, and children of historic Palestine. HAMAS cruelty and stupidity echoes Zionist cruelty and stupidity and on and on it goes. Neither approach will build peace or security.

The weapons industry and a global war machine- AND INJUSTICE- burgeon with American tax payer funds.

Violence is a problem- not the answer.

STOP THE SIEGE- stop funding crazy cruel Israeli schemes & the forced displacement, imprisonment, starvation, torture, and killing of human beings in Gaza and Palestine

"Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world..."   https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights

 

"Jews and Israel are not the same. Equating them is a propaganda technique. The claim is central to rationales for arming Israel even as leading human rights groups decry genocide in Gaza."

Central to rationales for arming Israel is the claim that it is the nation of “the Jewish people”.’ Photograph: Abdel Kareem Hana/AP

"During the 1980s, when activists in the United States and elsewhere targeted apartheid South Africa with non-violent campaigns for boycotts, divestment and sanctions, those actions did not provoke charges of being anti-white. In this century, the nonviolent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement has targeted Israel, a country condemned as an apartheid state by one human rights organization after another after another – and BDS supporters, even if Jewish, routinely face accusations of antisemitism. In Congress, the accusers include many liberal Democrats" 

by Norman Solomon

Tue 16 Sep 2025

The Guardian  

More than nine months after Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch issued reports that concluded Israel was committing genocide – and more than a month since key Israeli human rights groups asserted the same – the American political establishment remains in rigid denial while horrors continue nonstop in Gaza. Virtually all Republicans and most Democrats in Congress still support massive US arms shipments to Israel, so they certainly can’t admit that the weaponry is making genocide possible.America

Central to rationales for arming Israel is the claim that it is the nation of “the Jewish people”.

When the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, spoke via video to a conference in Jerusalem three months ago, he declared: “There can be no nuanced separation of hatred of Israel and hatred of the Jewish people.” Rubio added: “Those who call for the destruction of Israel are calling for the destruction of the Jewish people.” Last month, the House speaker, Mike Johnson, reinforced the same message while visiting Israel, where he reportedly said that the West Bank was “the rightful property of the Jewish people”.

Such rhetoric – equating Israel with all Jews and Israel’s future with theirs – is an effort to sanctify Israel and shield it from criticism by brandishing the charge of antisemitism.

Fusing Israel with “the Jewish people” is a key propaganda technique. The fact that it’s so ubiquitous makes it no less ridiculous, or dangerous. A comment attributed to Voltaire applies: “As long as people believe in absurdities they will continue to commit atrocities.”

And atrocities continue with no end in sight. Israel has persisted with methodical – and clearly intentional – killing of Palestinian civilians not only with bombs, missiles and bullets but also with starvation as a weapon of war. Blockage or extreme constriction of humanitarian aid has been the norm. All summer, Israel has ignored the United Nations warning issued in June that food intake in Gaza had dropped far below “survival” level. By then, the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross said conditions there had become worse than “hell on earth”.

Ironically, the country that we’re told is the ultimate target of antisemitism is now, in reality, the world’s most powerful cause of antisemitism. By insisting that it is the embodiment of Jews all over the world, the state of Israel seeks to associate Jews everywhere with its systematic war crimes and genocide in Gaza along with deadly ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the West Bank.... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/sep/16/jews-israel-not-the-same-propaganda-technique

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