I recently received a phone call and then a follow-up email from a group called “Never Again Is Now” who are calling Christians to participate in rallies standing against Antisemitic hate in Australia. In the phone call, I felt quite positive about their approach, but after receiving their email and reading their website, I grew concerned that their campaign is likely to be dangerously counter-productive. Here’s my emailed response to them:

On 4 Apr 2024, neveragainisnow.com.au wrote:

We recently spoke to one of the team members of your church and wanted to pass on our appreciation for taking the time to hear about the Never Again is Now movement which is standing against Antisemitic hate in Australia.
No matter what one’s position on the devastating war in the Middle East, the 738% increase in reported antisemitic attacks is not acceptable and Never Again is Now (NAIN) believes that decent, peace -loving Australians must stand together with our Jewish community

Dear NAIN team,

I too appreciated our recent phone call, and the sentiments expressed by your caller. Having spent some time in Israel just last July, I feel closer to the situation there and very concerned about it.

However, after receiving your emailed information and having a look at your website, I have concluded that I cannot support or promote your event, and I thought I owed you an explanation.

While I can agree with pretty much everything that is said in your material, often what is not said speaks as loudly as what is said. I can’t see any way that your event is going to avoid the widespread perception that it has taken sides and contributed to the division and hostility. In fact I would be concerned that your events could actually make antisemitic sentiments and action more likely rather than less likely.

The current conflict in Gaza has undoubtedly caused a horrendous increase in hate speech and hate attacks in Australia, but these have been directed at Jews and Arabs and even at Muslims from the non-Arab world. Any and all of these can and should be called out and opposed, but in the current climate of division and conflict, to call out one side of it while maintaining silence about the other side cannot possibly escape being seen as a partisan and divisive response which is likely to produce a further backlash. 

All racism and hate attacks go against Australian values and Judeo-Christian values, not just the forms directed at those who we perceive as being closer to “us”. If we Christians respond to this conflict in ways which publicly identify us as “friends and allies” of the victims on one side but as silent or indifferent to the victims on the other side, we badly misrepresent Jesus and his mission. We would certainly not be living up to Jesus’s teaching in his Parable of the Good West-bank Palestinian (Luke 10:25-37). 

I also found the way your flyers used scripture to argue that “Christians must stand for Israel” to be deeply flawed, again because of what it doesn’t say rather than what it does say. It would surely be impossible to read the Bible as a whole without realising that Israel (like every other nation and people) has a long history of failing to live up to the justice and righteousness that God calls them to, and that when that happens, God turns against their evil and even uses other nations to humble them. So why would it be any more likely now that God would have us stand in support of Israel than that God would use us to speak strong truth in love to Israel?

This lop-sided use of the Bible would seem to put you in danger of being associated with the dangerous, but seldom acknowledged out loud, Christian heresy that believes that Biblical prophesy was not fulfilled in Jesus but in some combination of Jesus and the 1948 re-establishment of the state of Israel.

The current leadership of Israel has a policy of seeking to equate any criticism of Israel and its actions with antisemitism. It has proved to be a very effective strategy, but we Christians don’t have to get sucked in by such propaganda.

That modern Israel is an apartheid state has been acknowledged even by Israeli leaders such as Michael Ben-Yair, former attorney general of Israel, and Tamir Pardo, a former head of Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency. (See here and here for careful discussions of the use of the term apartheid in relation to Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian Territories.) Even Ehud Barak, former Israeli Prime Minister and before that Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces, has said that if he were a Palestinian living under the conditions of the Israeli occupation, he would probably be a terrorist (see here).

So why are you not calling us to stand with these Israelis and Jews, and the thousands of others who are openly critical of their own nation’s violence and oppression? Why are you instead calling us to a seemingly unquestioning ally-ship with Israel that will surely be seen as being sucked into the deliberate Israeli conflation of legitimate criticism with antisemitism?

So, I am sorry, but I cannot support or promote your event. If it were a rally to stand equally against all the expressions of racism and hate-attacks that have flared up over the Gaza conflict, then I would gladly be there with you. But as long as you are promoting your event in a way that will be inevitably seen as taking sides (there is not a single mention of Gaza or Palestinians or attacks by Israel or Islamaphobia on your event flyer), it is more likely to result in an increase in antisemitism than a decrease. It is precisely because I love Israel and my Jewish sisters and brothers that I cannot endorse your campaign.

Peace and hope,

Nathan Nettleton