Last week, the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem delivered a global petition to the United Nations demanding that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad be indicted for incitement to genocide against Israel. On Thursday evening, we will follow this up by participating in the protest rally against Ahmadinejad’s special invitation to tonight’s dialogue dinner in New York’s Grand Central Hyatt hotel, co-hosted by the American Friends Service Committee, Mennonite Central Committee, Quaker UN Office, and the World Council of Churches, among others. The following statement from ICEJ Executive Director Malcolm Hedding is being released to our worldwide constituency concerning tonight’s event:
Once again we hear of misguided Church leaders falling over themselves to give credibility to an anti-Semite, Holocaust denying despot! Naturally the Quaker and Mennonite movements will justify their invitation to President Achmadinejad of Iran to meet with them at a reception by claiming the Christian basis of dialogue, reconciliation and fairplay! The truth is; these concepts of Christianity are abused by this invitation and, if the truth be known, this is nothing short of the appeasement of wickedness. The Bible nowhere advocates this type of engagement and in fact warns against it!
Jesus did not talk with Herod because he represented a system that was corrupt and evil. He answered with total silence and indeed, on one occasion, called him a fox! He knew the boundaries between legitimate engagement and evil systems dedicated to the destruction of God’s people. Ahmadinejad has given ample proof of his radical Islamic agenda to remove Israel from the map of the earth and of his desire to strike at the “Crusader”, a reference to the Christian world and particularly to the United States of America.
Thus, the more he is afforded respectability so the more he advances his nuclear agenda and, no doubt, scoffs at the naïve people that fall over him and entertain him. One cannot help but remember how foreign leaders including Chamberlain, the Prime Minister of Britain, rushed to Berlin to sit down with Herr Hitler in the interests of peace and dialogue. Some of them returned home and gave a glowing report of pre-war Germany and of the policies of the Third Reich as promoted by the Fuhrer! Sadly, history affirms that Hitler made fools out of them and used their naiveté to buy time in order to more fully prepare for war. A war that in the end cost the lives of fifty-three million people including six million Jews!
The Quaker and Mennonite Church Leaders would serve the interests of peace better by calling upon the international community to take steps now to effectively stop Ahmadinejad in his quest for weapons of mass destruction. Weapons that he will definitely deploy in his stated war against the Jews and the Christians! When millions of people again die what will their reception look like and how will it be recorded in history? And, what of the smiling full colour “photo shoot”? They will forever be associated with the appeasement of wickedness!
Malcolm Hedding
Executive Director
