After Scottish cleric John Bell (pictured) and the BBC both apologized for a BBC Radio ‘Thought for the Day’ session in which Bell accused the IDF of deliberately shooting at ‘unarmed [Palestinian] schoolchildren’, we thought the issue was closed. But one of Bell’s colleagues won’t let it die.
In a letter to the editor published in The (Scotland) Herald, Church of Scotland official Sandy Gemmill compares Bell to none other than… Jesus! Writes Gemmill:
‘Two thousand years ago there was a man in Israel who used such uncorroborated tales of Samaritans, servants, agricultural workers, sheep, weddings and the like to illustrate various controversial points. Clearly the passage of time has not dampened the enthusiasm of the Israeli authorities to speak out against such tales and take action to suppress apparent lies …Unfortunately, any criticism of the Israeli government is now taken as being anti-Semitic…The term should not be used to deflect unfavourable comments about the way that governments abuse their powers. The Israeli government is no different from those in authority in, for example, Great Britain and the United States. Governments are like monoliths in exercising power on behalf of the people and from time to time must be reminded of the need to see beyond their own self-centred interests to those of the human race. If an uncorroborated story concerning any member of the Israeli Army, real or imaginary, can aid that process then that should be applauded.’
Melanie Phillips responds to what she calls this ‘surreal and sinister turn’ in this story:
So faced with a libel perpetrated against the Jews, Gemmill concludes that the Jews who are protesting are trying to suppress the truth and crucify the perpetrator, just like he thinks they did to Jesus! One is aghast at this calumny piled upon calumny, at the anti-Jewish prejudice that is here revealed and at the brazen revelation of the ancient theological underpinning of this prejudice. Gemmill assumes that what Bell said was true, even though there is not a shred of evidence for it and even though his account contained two demonstrable errors of fact which should surely give any rational person grounds for suspecting that the whole thing was a farrago of nonsense.
