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Deborah Fink (left) with singers at St James’s church |
Jewish group under fire over protest carols
A JEWISH group opposed to Israeli policy towards Palestine staged a parody of the traditional Chistmas carol service at a famous West End church on Wednesday.
Among the more provactive lyrics heard at St James’s Church in Piccadilly were:“Once in royal David’s city, stood a big apartheid wall”, “While shepherds watched their flocks by night, all seated on the ground, some occupying soldiers came and bulldozed all around” and “In the bleak midwinter, refugees make moan, Olmert stands like iron, Bush is like a stone”.
Sniper towers, trampled doves and an uprooted olive tree replaced the more coventional drummers, French hens and ladies dancing in the spoof version of the 12 Days of Christmas.
The concert also featured readings by outspoken politician Baroness Tonge, who was sacked from the Lib Dem front bench in 1994 for sympathising with suicide bombers, and Jocelyn Hurndall, the mother of the 21-year-old peace activist Tom Hurndall who was shot in the Gaza Strip in 2001.
Organisers from the Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods organisation (J-BIG) say Bethlehem now: 9 Alternative Lessons and Carols for Palestine – attended by around 200 people – was intended as a “wake-up call to the world”.
But it has sparked outrage from some corners of the church community, and has been branded distasteful.
Baroness Tonge said: “A carol is a carol. It is not a sacred text. All we’ve done is adapt them.
To me it’s no different from my son changing the words of We Three Kings, to ‘one on a motorbike one in a car’. I see nothing wrong in doing this in a church. Yes it is deliberately provocative, but we need to draw attention to what is going on at this very moment in the Middle East.”
Last week, Daily Telegraph leader writer Damian Thompson, blogging on the newspaper’s website, called on the Bishop of London, Dr Richard Chartres, to halt the event, saying its usse of carols to make a political point was “indefensible”.
He wrote: “Whatever your views on Palestine, allowing a historic church and a much-loved carol to be used to disseminate political propaganda is indefensible, and a tremendous insult to Christians.”
The Diocese of London refused to comment but a number of churches refused to stage the event.”
Organiser Deborah Fink, 42, a singing teacher, said: “At a time of year when much of the world is focusing on Bethlehem, very few people are aware that the ‘Little Town’ is now surrounded by a 10-metre-high wall, with the people imprisoned inside and their economy destroyed.”
J-Big was set up last year to object to what members claim is an illegal occupation of Palestinian land by Israel. A statement on their website says: “ We call on those of our fellow Jews who are inclined to support the State of Israel unconditionally to think critically about what Israel does in our names. We call on every ethical consumer, of any faith or none, to refuse to support the Israeli economy for as long as the illegal occupation and exploitation of Palestine persists.” |
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Your comments:
I'm an evangelical Anglican. I've read the carols, been to Palestine/Israel: the words are true, what's the problem? The church being provocative? If people are upset by the truth surely that is their problem.
D. Carter
Well done on this imaginative carol concert to highlight what is going on in Bethlehem and in the Occupied Territories. It is not sacreligious as is being made out, but in fact a truly Christian (and Jewish) thing to do. In fact these carols were sung five years ago in Trafalgar Square before a packed and appreciative mixed crowd who were all eager to get the song sheets. Lamentably, many Anglican and other church leaders do not seem to see the significance of what is happening in the Holy Land, and should be supporting not condemning those who expose Isreal's breaches of human rights, the terrible suffering of the Palestinian people, and the treat to the survival of the Christian community in Palestine who have left in droves over the past decades.
A. Hayeem |
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