Pro-Israel Views Get NGO in Iraq Defunded by Catholic Charity
Doing good work apparently means little to Caritas if you hold politically incorrect positions.
The Swiss division of Caritas likes to present itself as an apolitical organization, which helps refugees, feeds children, and takes a principled stand in support of the needy and disadvantaged. In reality, Osten-Sacken charges in a written response to the termination letter, Caritas is anything but neutral. Vis-à-vis Palestinian groups that deny Israel’s right to exist and justify terrorist attacks, for example, Caritas displays none of the scruples that it has shown toward Wadi. (The exchange of letters is available in German here.)
Osten-Sacken points, in particular, to the involvement of Caritas in the “Forum on Human Rights in Israel and Palestine,” a Swiss umbrella group that also includes Amnesty International, the Protestant aid agency HEKS, and several Swiss-based Palestinian organizations. Officially, the “Forum” pursues strictly humanitarian aims. In reality, however, the aims are eminently political. Thus, a core item on its agenda is the “right of return”: namely, of Palestinians whose ancestors were expelled from their homes sixty years ago. In light of demographic developments in the meanwhile, what in theory may appear a just demand would in practice represent the end of Israel as a Jewish state.
The most important local partner of the Swiss “Forum” is the Palestinian organization Badil, which also receives financing from the Swiss Department of Foreign Affairs. Watchdog groups sympathetic to Israel, like the NGO-Monitor, accuse Badil of harboring thinly-veiled extremist tendencies. On their account, Badil has defended suicide bombings and demanded a complete boycott of Israel — a boycott that is supposed to extend even to cultural exchanges. EU states have thus declined to work with Badil.
Up to now, Caritas has not taken any official position on calls for a boycott of Israel. But in light of the historical precedent represented by the “Don’t Buy from Jews” slogan, this silence is itself a kind of statement. Officially, Caritas — like most NGOs — condemns all forms of violence. But — as in the case of Colombia and the FARC — in practice the NGOs place a democratically-elected Israeli government on the same level as terrorist organizations. And when it is a mater of condemning concrete human rights violations, it is always the western-oriented governments that get pilloried.
Although Caritas calls for dialogue as the solution to armed conflicts, the termination letter to Wadi was dispatched without any prior notice. In its response, the Wadi board writes that it was prepared to send a representative to Lucerne to discuss the matter. “We are not avoiding dialogue with Wadi,” Norbert Kieliger of Caritas says. “We are conducting the discussion in writing.” Unfortunately, however, not before but after announcing the termination of the funding for the successful project: a project that, in any case, has nothing whatsoever to do with Israel.
The above article originally appeared in German here in the Swiss weekly Die Weltwoche. The English translation is by John Rosenthal.
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Alex Baur writes for the Swiss weekly Die Weltwoche.
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11 Comments
1. PhilA:I worked for an American NGO in Northern Iraq, and while I never had the opportunity to meet anybody from Wadi, I did hear success stories, both through the NGO grapevine and through local partners, of Wadi’s projects. Wadi is respected by the local population for being loyal and not leaving at the first sign of trouble like many others. Many Kurds are apolitical, and when they hear that popular initiatives have been cut back because some donor didn’t like what the NGO was saying, only Caritas will be losing face. Caritas seems to have forgotten the NGO Code of Conduct (which ironically, they helped to develop), whose first point says that the Humanitarian imperative comes first.
Aug 14, 2008 - 5:35 am 2. ZEITGEIST:[...] TOO PRO-ISRAEL for Catholic charity? [...]
Aug 14, 2008 - 6:03 am 3. Uhlenspiegel:Why not organize a fundraiser for WADI?
Aug 14, 2008 - 10:25 am 4. Tom Paine:This is another example of NGO subversion…
I want NGO governance to be as strictly transparent? exposed? regulated? …? as any other multi-national business.
Sunshine is the best disinfectant.
Aug 14, 2008 - 11:39 am 5. Steynian 224 « Free Mark Steyn!:[...] PRO-ISRAEL VIEWS Gets NGO in Iraq Defunded by Catholic Charity …. [...]
Aug 14, 2008 - 3:48 pm 6. cubanbob:The best thing to do with these NGO’s is to simply kick them out. Israel and Colombia have a responsibilty to their own people, not to placate the friends of their enemies.
As sovereign nations they have the right and the obligation to choose whom to let in to their countries and on what terms. So there will be bad press and outcry. So what. That is all there will be. Just ask the Russians.
Aug 14, 2008 - 4:00 pm 7. Don Kenner:Let’s not miss the point here. Caritas, like all Catholic social justice organizations, is vehemently anti-Israel. Their office in Jerusalem regularly issues denunciations of Israeli defensive actions (even non-violent ones like checkpoints), and they are SILENT when it comes to Islamic terror and violence, even when that violence is directed at Arab Christians.
This all meshes quite well with Jerusalem’s Latin Patriarch Sabbah, a Palestinian, who was best friends with Arafat and recently denied the legitimacy of the Jewish state. Ditto with European and American Bishops.
But why should the Catholic Church stop is viscous bias against Israel? Has any Catholic (other than myself) ever stopped giving money to the Church in protest? Do American Catholics, even “conservative” ones ever call the Church or these organizations on the carpet?
Is there any downside for the Church sticking it to Israel? If so, I’ve never seen it. Any Catholic leader who goes to Israel will immediately be treated like the long-awaited Messiah by the Israeli government. When Catholics stop funding Caritas you’ll see some back-pedaling on the perfidious Israelis. Not for the right reasons, of course.
Aug 14, 2008 - 6:16 pm 8. Javelin:Mr. Kenner,
Aug 14, 2008 - 7:37 pm 9. John Moore:Good point, then why do so many pro Israeli cons pretend that the Church is Israel’s and the Jew’s best friend? Jeez, from some of the trash I’ve read on NRO and other Papist blogs you’d think that the Pope and his family were conducting acts of sabotague and subversion (and the Vatican was an armed resistance camp) against the Nazis when in reality they obeyed the Party’s orders like 99% of the Germans. And like 99% of the Germans, said they hated the Nazis but couldn’t do a thing about it, which of course, they knew nothing of.
Mr Kenner,
The idea that the Catholic Church has a viscous[sic] bias against Israel is just plain wrong. That some Catholic groups would be anti-Israel is not surprising, just as some were pro-Sandinista (liberation theologists.
However, you slander the Church by imputing to it the behavior of a Catholic Charity. As for “social justice organizations” – that term is code for leftist, liberationist organizations, which tend to be anti-Israeli, regardless of what organization or religion they are associated with.
Nowhere does the article tie the Catholic church to the reported anti-Israel behavior of Caritas. Including “Catholic” in the title is thus inappropriate and offensive. The organization is as European as it is Catholic. Why wasn’t it described as a European Charity?
Shall we mention Jewish social justice organizations that have long supported communists, including communist dictators? I think it would be highly inappropriate to mention their Jewish association when discussing their politics.
Aug 14, 2008 - 10:30 pm 10. Maria Lamberti:Here is more information about the great campaign they are doing against Female Genital Mutiliation in Iraq: http://www.stopfgmkurdistan.org
Aug 15, 2008 - 2:59 pm 11. Filipa Mendes:Caritas Catholica is without the shadow of a doubt a Catholic and European charity.
Their Swiss website bears no mention of “Catholica” and no logo with the cross. There is a lot of hypocrisy – they, like most Catholic charities and NGOs – hide the fact/or are very discreet about it – that they are Catholic.
http://web.caritas.ch/page2.php?lang=fr
They are definitely anti-Israel.
Aug 17, 2008 - 5:28 am