by Joseph W
This is Sami Awad a BDS activist, who heads up the Holy Land Trust:
Awad talks about “nonviolent” resistance, and that’s how he likes to present his case to churches – as a do-gooder who simply wants to boycott Israel for the sake of peace and nonviolence.
But he’s not too hung up on the point,saying:
Our goal is to involve all people in the popular resistance. I call for every person to ask themselves each day when they wake up what they can do that day to resist the occupation, whether it is coming up with a new slogan or music, writing something, it doesn’t matter what. What does matter, what is crucially important, is that all people are engaged in this popular struggle.
This is not a substitute for the armed struggle. This is not a method for normalization with the occupation. Our goal is to revive the popular resistance until every person is involved in dismantling the occupation.”
Awad will be talking at the Christ at the Checkpoint conference 2012, alongsidevarious Christian antizionists who have been associated with terrorists, and recommend the writings of Holocaust deniers.
Ben White has been pushing this conference, as an event where he can have respectful dialogue with Christian academics and preachers, in a fair and moderate setting.
Sami Awad presents himself as a moderate, but he is not quite so moderate as he appears.
Certainly Awad doesn’t help his own credibility much, by hosting the crazy antizionist Greek Orthodox priest Atallah Hanna at the Holy Land Trust:
According to reports in popular evangelical magazine Christianity Today, Atallah Hanna supports suicide bombings – a position that drew outrage from the paper. Hanna apparently said this:
As you know, political parties in Palestine agree to the continuation of the intifada, which includes different approaches of struggle. Some freedom fighters adopt martyrdom or suicide bombing, while others opt for other measures. But all these struggles serve the continued intifada for freedom. Therefore, we support all these causes.
[…]
We are part of the intifada, so you don’t expect us to keep distance and watch. We are in the struggle, whether it’s martyrdom or any other means, we are part of it.
Hanna has since denied these things, although Islam Online report he has. Here you can see Hanna ranting about “Satanic” and diabolical Zionism, and promising that Palestine will be free “from the river to the sea”:
Both Sami Awad (RTing Sizer) and Atallah Hanna have been defending the antisemite and Swastika fan Raed Salah, in public.
Of the other CATC 2012 conference speakers, Sizer and White both seem convinced that Raed Salah is the man to help them “save Jerusalem” – despite the fact his narrative about Jews heavily draws from mediaeval Christian antisemitic myths, like the idea that Jews use the blood of Christian children to make matzah.
I hope speakers at Christ at the Checkpoint 2012 will challenge Awad on his ties to Hanna and his defence of Salah, which ought to cause great concern about his ministry.