How Anti-Israel NGO’s Abuse and Misuse the Christmas Message

Israel haters will use anything, even Christmas, to express their contempt for the Jewish State.  

Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) operating internationally do defame and delegitimize Israel are, again, exploiting the season’s good tidings for hatred and ill-will against the Jewish State.

NGO Monitor, an independent research institution that monitors other NGOs claiming to fight for human rights but which in fact assault Israel, has documented this year such abuses of the holiday’s message, as it has done in previous years.

“Many politicized NGOs and well-known charities have been exploiting the 2015 Christmas season with anti-peace campaigns, some of which glorify terrorism,” the watchdog said in a statement.

Groups such as Sabeel, which is funded by Sweden and the Netherlands, War on Want, which is funded by the United Kingdom, the European Union (EU), and Ireland, Adalah-NY, Kairos Palestine, and Amos Trust are again using religious and holiday themes to demonize Israel. “These organizations utilize inflammatory and offensive rhetoric in their Christmas carols, holiday messages, appeals, and religious imagery,” NGO Monitor said.

According to the report, while spreading hatred against Israel, the organizations’ messages are stripped of context, omitting references to deadly Palestinian terrorism and other violence against Israelis. They also fail to condemn the almost daily Palestinian terror attacks Israelis have been enduing over the past three months.

For example, many of these so-called Christmas messages allege that the security barrier causes harm to Palestinians, while failing to mention its role in protecting civilians against terror attacks.

Another example is of the Palestinian Al Quds University in Jerusalem, which receives funding from the EU’s Partnerships for Peace program, and which displayed a “martyrs tree” this year. The tree’s decorations included pictures of terrorists who had conducted attacks against Israeli civilians over the previous few months. The tree was revealed in an event attended by the University’s President and the Mufti of Bethlehem.

The abuse of Christmas messages is part of a broad international campaign of political warfare conducted against Israel in some churches, NGO Monitor explained. Palestinian Christian NGOs, such as Sabeel and Kairos Palestine, provide the theological and ideological frameworks for these attacks.

“Despite claiming to promote moral agendas with messages of peace, these NGOs and charities actually abuse this holiday and religious symbols.  Their intolerant and theologically charged messages aggravate an already polarized and violent conflict,” NGO Monitor stated.

By: Max Gelber, United with Israel