Palestinian priest defends comments on Israel
The Anglican vows to continue speaking out against the occupation and stands by the parallels he has drawn between his people's lives today and the hardships faced by Jesus and early Christians.
The Rev. Naim Ateek is a white-haired, American-trained Anglican priest who supports nonviolent solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and often speaks of his dream of a world in which Israeli and Palestinian states exist peacefully, side by side.
Ateek is also the founder of Sabeel, a Palestinian liberation theology movement based in Jerusalem, and a man whose U.S. appearances in recent years have sparked controversy among some Jewish groups.
Critics say Ateek uses imagery, such as references to the crucifixion, that vilifies Israel and they contend that the conferences he is associated with present speakers and material that are biased against the Jewish state.
Ateek spoke at a recent Middle East conference in Pasadena that was sponsored by Friends of Sabeel, an organization of American Christians. The gathering drew several hundred people to All Saints Episcopal Church for lectures and workshops on topics that included a history of the Israeli occupation, U.S. policy in the Middle East and the shrinking presence of Palestinian Christians in the land known as the cradle of their faith.
In an interview during his visit to Southern California, where he has family links and years of ties to local churches and theologians, Ateek spoke about the controversy he provokes and the emotion-charged language he uses to discuss Israel's four-decade occupation of Palestinian areas.
As a Christian and a priest, Ateek said, he and others like him have a responsibility to speak out.
"We are Palestinian Christians," he said. "This is certainly not our only agenda, but if we are not concerned with justice and peace and reconciliation, what is our faith really about? It's part of our responsibility as Christians -- part of being faithful to the truth and to our baptismal covenant -- to respect the dignity of every human being and speak out about injustice."
Ateek, 71, was born in Beisan, south of the Sea of Galilee in what was then Palestine. After the creation of Israel in 1948, Ateek grew up in Nazareth, where his family moved after Beisan was occupied. He attended college in the United States, earning a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Hardin-Simmons University in Texas, a master's in divinity from the Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley and a doctor of divinity degree at San Francisco Theological Seminary.
