I am writing to you, Your Grace, still under the effect of Mrs. Melanie Phillips article in The Spectator of February 16. In a shameless exercise of intellectual terrorism, Melanie Phillips (Christians who hate the Jews) argues that Christian criticism of Israeli misbehavior is the result of the deeply rooted historical hatred of Jews due to ” replacement theology ” fuelled and reactivated by ” Palestinian Christian revisionism ” rather than legitimate indignation at the dispersion and replacement of the Palestinian people.
London February 21, 2002
Dr. George Carey
Archbishop of Canterbury
Lambath Palace
Your Grace,
Mrs. Phillips has gone one article too far
I am writing to you, Your Grace, still under the effect of Mrs. Melanie Phillips article in The Spectator of February 16. In a shameless exercise of intellectual terrorism, Melanie Phillips (Christians who hate the Jews) argues that Christian criticism of Israeli misbehavior is the result of the deeply rooted historical hatred of Jews due to ” replacement theology ” fuelled and reactivated by ” Palestinian Christian revisionism ” rather than legitimate indignation at the dispersion and replacement of the Palestinian people.
Israel deals with the Christians of the Holy Land as an embarrassment and a nuisance because of their increasing capability to sensitize Western public opinion to the ordeal of the people to whom they belong. As a Christian Palestinian, I find it really regrettable, profoundly disturbing and extremely insulting that Mrs. Phillips can still find prominent Christian interlocutors that give her the impression-or a semblance of an impression – that such prejudices are justified.
On the other hand, I know this article has provoked discomfort and bewilderment within Christian circles in Palestine and here in the United Kingdom. Mrs. Phillips has gone one article too far.
Please accept, Your Grace, the expression of my highest consideration.
Afif Emile Safieh
Palestinian General Delegate to the
United Kingdom and to the Holy See
