B’nai B’rith International has condemned the anti-Israel messaging included in the World Council of Churches response to the fall of the Assad regime in Syria.
Jerry Pillay, general secretary of WCC, wrote in a Dec. 10 statement that the organization was “deeply alarmed by reports of the escalating attacks by Israeli armed forces against Syrian defense and industrial infrastructure, which threaten further destabilization and disruption of Syria’s path forward, and which constitute a violation of the 1974 disengagement agreement.”
‘We call for the immediate cessation of such opportunistic and destructive attacks which imperil the renewed but fragile hopes of the Syrian people for a better future,” Pillay stated.
David Michaels, director of B’nai B’rith International’s United Nations and intercommunal affairs, said in a Dec. 16 statement from the organization that Pillay’s response to the situation is “beyond deplorable.”
“Rev. Pillay and the WCC have yet again found a way to callously and singularly attack Israel—this time for acting to urgently protect its citizens, Christians, Muslims, Druze and Jews, from advanced military weaponry falling into the hands of jihadists, many long affiliated with ISIS and Al-Qaeda,” Michaels said.
Michaels called the weapons destroyed by Israel “one of the world’s most substantial and notorious stockpiles of lethal chemical arms—already used repeatedly against Syria’s own people.”
“This is ‘opportunistic’ and ‘destructive’? This is what ‘imperils’ hope for a better future? In what way, exactly, are Israelis ever actually allowed to defend the lives of their people?” he asked.
Michaels added, “Somehow, no one else—literally, no one—is censured in Rev. Pillay’s statement on the Syrian situation. The 50-year Assad dictatorship? Unmentioned. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the outgrowth of al-Qaeda that now leads Syrian governance? Unmentioned. Iran and its Hezbollah terrorists, which enforced Assad’s sadism and weaponized neighboring Lebanon? Unmentioned.”
He also noted the “demonization, delegitimization and double standards” in several of Pillay and the WCC’s responses concerning Israel and Jews worldwide.
“Persistently singling out Jews as villains and scapegoats is anti-Semitism,” Michaels said. “Justifying, minimizing or ignoring violence and existential threats against Jews, including Israeli Jews, is anti-Semitism, especially when Jews in both Israel and the Diaspora have been under relentless assault.”
