I criticize so-called Christian peacemaking organizations a lot. And when I do, some people respond with a mystified look on their faces. "How can you criticize people with such good intentions? They just want to bring peace to the Holy Land! What's wrong with that?"
My answer is simple and direct. In their efforts to promote peace in the Holy Land, these activists end up lending aid and comfort to folks who have murdered (or have tried to murder) Jews.
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Let's call this phenomenon "the Fools' Crusade." They're too old to be called children (even if they think and act like them), so the moniker "Children's Crusade" doesn't work. They're fools who seek to demonstrate how moral and righteous they are by giving propaganda victories to people who murder civilians – Jews especially.
The worst offenders are associated with the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI). If you live anywhere in Jerusalem or the West Bank, there's a good chance you've seen these activists, who have been recruited by the World Council of Churches to come to the Holy Land and annoy Israeli soldiers as they protect Jews living in places like Gush Etzion and Hebron.
They wear brown vests with the logo of a cross and a dove on the back and the words "World Council of Churches" stenciled across the top. The vests (which the volunteers sometimes hide when they want to downplay their connection to the WCC) give their wearers an air of authority. When they do things that bring shame on the WCC, the organization's staffers in Geneva say that their volunteers do not engage in political activism while in the Holy Land.
EAPPI activists have, on at least one occasion, visited with the families of known terrorists and then bragged about it afterward. The visit happened in November 2016 when EAPPI volunteers graced the homes of Labib Khaldon Anwar Azzam and Mihmoud Hisham Ali Z'jalan, two 17-year-old youths who were killed while attempting to murder Roy Harel and his family in their home in Eli.
The attack happened in March 2016 when Labib and Mihmoud assailed Harel early in the morning as he was leaving his home for reserve duty. They had waited outside his house after praying at the mosque the night before.
"They started attacking me with heavy wooden clubs," Harel told reporters after the attack. The two young men were able to gain entrance into his home where they headed for the children's bedroom. Harel was able to push them back out of the house and close the door behind them. During the melee, Harel yelled for his wife to call for help. After they were driven outside, the two hid nearby and attacked with knives the soldiers who arrived on the scene before they were shot and killed.
EAPPI activists from England and Ireland visited the families of Labib and Mihmoud a few months later, in November 2016. In a blog post in which they described their efforts to console the families of Labib and Mihmoud, EAPPI activists obscured the murderous intent of their attack, declaring, "The settler sustained light injuries." The blog post then goes on to describe the two would-be killers as good boys who were doing so well in school. "Labib hoped to study art and Mohammed engineering."
In their blog post, the EAPPI activists relayed a story told to them by the families that a preliminary medical report indicated that one of their boys had been shot through the head and the other through the mouth and that both had been driven over by a car.
These are gruesome details, but it's tough to know if they are true because one of the boys, Labib, was named after a Hamas suicide bomber who blew himself up on an Israeli bus in 1995, killing six Israelis and injuring 33 others. It's not as if folks associated with Hamas have been all that truthful in their dealings with the media!
Hamas praised the two young men after their attack on Harel, declaring they died during "a heroic stabbing attack." Prior to their deaths, the two young men posted pro-Hamas propaganda on their Facebook pages.
It's time to bring the WCC's Fools' Crusade to an end. The last thing the Holy Land needs is a bunch of well-meaning but ignorant young and naïve outsiders without skin in the game.
